The Ring · Samay Chakra

A living 3D world of eight prahars: the day turns through eight chapters, each drawn from a poster. There's carved sandstone, granite and marble, a crowd that dances on the beat, a generative raga engine, the real moon phase, weather that follows Bengaluru's seasons, and the sounds of each hour.

Live: https://s-ganti.github.io/samay-chakra/ (add ?q=high on a strong GPU, ?q=low on older machines)

It is a static web app (three.js + Vite). No server, no build secrets: anything that serves files can host it.

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Run it on your computer

1. Install Node.js 20.19 or newer (22 LTS is best) from https://nodejs.org and Git from https://git-scm.com.
2. Open a terminal in this folder and install the dependencies (once):

   npm install
   

3. Start the development server:

   npm run dev
   

   Your browser opens at http://localhost:5173. Every time you save a file in src/world/ or index.html, the page reloads with your change.
4. To check the production build locally:

   npm run build      # writes dist/
   npm run preview    # serves dist/ at http://localhost:4173
   

Put it online (GitHub Pages, free)

The repository already contains .github/workflows/deploy.yml, which builds the site and publishes it every time you push to main.

1. On github.com, create a new empty repository (for example samay-chakra). Leave the "Add a README", ".gitignore" and "license" boxes unchecked. It must be public on a free account (GitHub Pages for private repositories needs a paid plan).
2. In this folder, connect it and push (replace YOUR-USERNAME):

   git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/samay-chakra.git
   git push -u origin main
   

   Git will ask you to sign in the first time (a browser window, or GitHub Desktop / the GitHub CLI if you use them).
3. On GitHub: Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source: GitHub Actions.
4. Open the Actions tab and wait for "Deploy static content to Pages" to finish (about a minute). Your site is live at https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/samay-chakra/.
5. From now on: edit, git add -A, git commit -m "what changed", git push, and the site updates itself.

A custom domain (for example samaychakra.art) can be added later under Settings → Pages → Custom domain.

Share links

• ?style=fusion opens in the Fusion Series style: each chapter drawn as its poster's pairing of an Indian folk tradition and a modern movement (Gond × Art Deco, Warli × Op Art, Thangka × Suprematism, Madhubani × Star Atlas, Kalighat × Pop Art, Truck Art × Swiss Style, Pattachitra × Memphis, Kolam × Generative Code): ink outlines, flat bands of the design language's named pigments, and the poster's texture in the shade. Medium and High only; also under Controls → Render style, or the Y key.
• Four more render styles, each one cohesive concept (src/world/75_styles.js), also Medium and High only:
  • ?style=sumi: Sumi & Shu, ink wash on rice paper after Hasegawa Tōhaku's Pine Trees, Sesshū and Ōkami; distance dissolves into mist, a pressure-varied brush line, and only vermilion survives (fire, lamps, sindoor), Kurosawa-style. Signed with a red hanko seal bearing the ring.
  • ?style=neon: Chungking Neon, after Christopher Doyle and Wong Kar-wai, Blade Runner 2049 and Akira: the chapter's colour owns the frame against one counter colour, step-printed motion smear, film halation, anamorphic streaks, 2.39:1 scope bars, heavy grain.
  • ?style=paint: Painted Light, after Kazuo Oga's Ghibli backgrounds, Makoto Shinkai's light, Monet and Van Gogh, and Arcane: brush strokes that follow the forms, blue-violet shade instead of black, warm saturated light, thin wobbling coloured outlines, canvas weave.
  • ?style=cel: Cel Anime, the painted-background films (Oga, Shinkai): light in three soft-edged bands, shade that stays blue-violet and light that stays warm, flat colour washes, a thin tinted ink line that fades with distance, toon clouds with a sunlit rim, a deeper blue sky, drawn faces on the crowd. It is also the light-on-the-browser look: while it is on, the ambient-occlusion, light-shaft and depth-of-field passes are off, the shadow map is 1024 and the pixel budget is 25% smaller (the temporal pass rebuilds it); the terrain draws its ground from procedural noise (no texture reads) and the far ranges from procedural strata (applyStyleProfile in src/world/99_main.js). Starting the page in Cel (?style=cel, or choosing it and reloading) also skips the ground and range photographs and caps scanned textures at 512 px; choosing another style from a Cel start reloads the page at full detail. The Y key cycles through all five styles.
• ?q=high, ?q=med or ?q=low opens at that render quality, for example .

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗