Recommended external toolchain

While the Small World engine and its Node/Vite ecosystem handle core rendering and logic, building a complete 3D/2.5D game needs a supporting ecosystem of external art and asset tools.

Here's the recommended toolchain for working efficiently with the engine:

1. 3D modeling & rigging: Blender

• Role: The absolute standard for 3D modeling, rigging, and animation.
• Usage:
  • Import Mixamo/Sketchfab models to edit skeletons, adjust weights, or combine animations.
  • Design levels and export NavMeshes (invisible collision/walkable areas) for the engine.
  • Optimize geometry (reduce polygons) and bake PBR textures into single atlases to reduce WebGL/WebGPU draw calls.
• Status: Essential.

2. GLTF/GLB optimization: glTF-Transform

• Role: Khronos Group's CLI toolsuite for strong asset compression.
• Usage:
  • Unoptimized .glb files (e.g. direct Mixamo exports) often contain uncompressed data, unused bones, or massive animation tracks (30MB+).
  • gltf-transform lets you apply Draco or Meshopt compression, quantization, and pruning directly from the terminal, often shrinking assets down to 1-2 MB.
  • Tip: Can be run locally via npx @gltf-transform/cli.
• Status: Strongly recommended (for production builds).

3. 2.5D art & textures: Krita / Photoshop / Affinity

• Role: 2D image editing, matte painting, and layer cutouts.
• Usage:
  • Create the static 2.5D backgrounds ("peepshow principle") by painting over 3D blockouts or AI-generated concepts.
  • Create foreground cutouts (transparent layers like pillars, railings, pipes) for characters to walk behind.
  • Create alpha masks for depth compositing in the shader.
  • File format standard: Export finished 2D assets as WebP (.webp), for lossless/lossy compression without JPEG block artifacts, with full alpha transparency support and a small footprint (~200KB per 1080p panel).
• Status: Essential.

4. Audio engineering: Audacity

• Role: Free, open-source audio editor.
• Usage:
  • Trim, loop, and mix raw sound effects (footsteps, UI clicks, ambient tracks).
  • Export optimized .ogg or .mp3 files for the engine's audio context.
• Status: Essential (once audio implementation begins).

5. FBX-to-GLTF conversion: fbx2gltf / web converters

• Role: Format conversion for 3D assets.
• Usage:
  • Small World exclusively uses the open glTF/GLB standard via GltfLoader.
  • When downloading .fbx files (e.g. from Mixamo), they need to be converted. This can be done via the fbx2gltf CLI tool or quickly via web converters like AnyConv.
• Status: Necessary auxiliary tool.

6. AI concept art & background inpainting: integrated image generator

• Role: Automated generation and editing of 2.5D matte-painting backgrounds and concept art.
• Usage:
  • Generate consistent, graphic-noir-style environment sketches and scene backgrounds.
  • Image-to-image editing/inpainting (e.g. removing temporary characters/objects from background panels to create clean, empty 2.5D stages).
  • Direct execution via the agent's generate_image tool with reference image inputs.
  • Aspect ratio standard: Always enforce AspectRatio: "16:9" to match the 3D stage's Plane({ width: 16, height: 9 }) distortion-free, 1:1.
• Status: Integrated agent capability.