Previs

An exploration of planning shots, lenses, and actor positions inside walkable 3D sets.

Creative tools3D
scene-builder-3d in dark mode: a lighthouse set with a wall, a house, crates and three wooden figures, with the shot strip below
scene-builder-3d running locally in dark mode, with a small lighthouse set built for this page.
Status
Exploration, two browser prototypes
Tools
Next.js, React Three Fiber, Zustand, IndexedDB
Links
Source

Block a scene in the browser and compare camera setups before anything is filmed or generated. Simple geometry, figures and a camera make the intended staging visible, and each shot stays tied to its scene.

Orbiting the set, then stepping through three shots: a 24 mm wide, a 50 mm medium and an 85 mm close-up on the lamp.

From blocking to generated video

Each shot was rendered through its own camera in scene-builder-3d, then sent to Seedance 2.0 with frames from that render as references and a written prompt. The blocking fixed the framing, lens and positions; the prompt described the look. Seedance takes a reference video only from a public URL, so these runs used stills: the first, middle and last frame for the moving shot, and one frame for each locked-off shot.

  1. 01 Arrival

    Blocking, scene-builder-3d
    Generated, Seedance 2.0

    24 mm wide, trucking left. The wall, tower, cottage and visitor stay where the blocking put them. Two mannequins behind the wall came back as small orange figures: the model read the stand-ins too literally.

  2. 02 Keeper and visitor

    Blocking, scene-builder-3d
    Generated, Seedance 2.0

    50 mm medium, locked off. The three positions and the raised arm carried over from the blocking; the costumes and the lit window came from the prompt.

  3. 03 The lamp

    Blocking, scene-builder-3d
    Generated, Seedance 2.0

    85 mm low-angle close-up, locked off. The lamp coming on was asked for in the prompt; the blocking only fixed where the lamp room sits in frame.

Decisions

One stage, several shots

The scene owns the set; each shot owns its overrides. Camera presets and auto-key reduce the work required to explore movement. The scene board tracks progress from empty shots through blocking, generation, and approval.

Scene Builder v2 shot editor with a 3D stage, camera controls, auto-key and a timeline
The Scene Builder v2 shot editor, using its seeded sample scene.

Know when a clip is stale

A captured clip is tied to the state that produced it. Moving a figure makes the clip stale; renaming a shot does not. Video lives in IndexedDB while the editable film document is persisted separately.

Next project
Flow Builder