Halden Tide

The brief

Create an interactive 3D product viewer that holds up to close inspection.

The idea

Most 3D viewers load a model made elsewhere. This one is built from equations: lathed case, extruded hands, generated dial, and a working gear train behind it. A fourth hand follows the twelve hour twenty-five minute beat of the tides.

Decisions

• The hands read your device clock, so it feels alive straight away.
• The seconds hand sweeps in eighths of a second, the way a mechanical watch does.
• Dial and bezel are drawn as canvas textures, so colour changes are instant.
• Take it apart reveals the movement, with its gears turning.

How it came together

1. Modelled every part with lathes and extrusions.
2. Drew dial and bezel as canvas textures.
3. Lowered the environment light and thinned the crystal after a first render washed out the dial.

How it works

No external model file. Every part is generated at start-up by three.js geometry, with standard physically based materials.