A believable machine, from primitives.

01 · Concept & direction

The premise: a boutique analog synthesizer maker that could have existed in 1974 — Moog-era engineering with French salon manners. The design language is a period print catalogue: cream paper, espresso ink, hairline double rules, dot-leader spec tables, plates numbered Planche 01–05, and bilingual copy (French panel labels, English body — an "export edition" printed in Paris).

The tension that makes it work: everything reads as static 1970s print, but the centrepiece is interactive 3D and the catalogue actually makes sound. Technical romance: waveforms described like weather, specifications that end in jokes, a warranty measured in generations.

02 · Palette & type

03 · Signature technique — the procedural ONDES 77

The synthesizer is 100% procedural — no GLB, no modelling software. Walnut end-cheeks are extruded 2D profiles; knobs are lathe geometries; the knurled grip is a deliberately low-poly cylinder with flat shading (18 facets read as ribs). The believability comes from two tricks:

1 — One layout object drives both worlds. A single PANEL table defines every control's position, label, and tooltip. The same coordinates place the 3D knobs and draw the silk-screen print onto a 2200×1000 canvas that becomes the faceplate texture — so legends always sit exactly under their knobs, like a real screen-printed panel:

// plate local space: x ∈ [-2.2, 2.2], z ∈ [-1, 1] → canvas 2200×1000
const px = (x) => (x + 2.2) * 500, pz = (z) => (z + 1.0) * 500

// the same entry prints the legend AND positions the mesh
{ id: 'fc', kind: 'knob', x: -0.34, z: -0.38, label: 'FRÉQUENCE',
  name: 'Filtre — Fréquence',
  tip: 'Where the light enters. Close it and the room gets warm.' }

// knobs: a lathe profile — skirt, ribbed grip, domed cap
const body = new THREE.Mesh(new THREE.LatheGeometry(profile, 44), bakelite)
const grip = new THREE.Mesh(
  new THREE.CylinderGeometry(0.117, 0.121, 0.068, 18), bakeliteDark)
grip.material.flatShading = true  // 18 facets ≈ knurling

2 — Studio lighting, not game lighting. A three-point rig (warm key with soft shadows, cool fill, bright rim for the walnut edge) over a PMREM room environment, ACES tone mapping, and a painted radial-gradient contact shadow. The key light's colour temperature lerps warm→cool as you scroll from the salon into the technical plates. Scroll drives the machine between beauty poses; a constrained inertial drag lets you turn it in your hands, and a raycaster turns every control into a hotspot with its own one-line poem.

The VU needle is real: when a drone plays, the Web Audio analyser's RMS drives the needle (fast attack, slow release, a little tremble at high level), the panel lamp warms up — and the SECTEUR switch physically throws itself on. Press the mood again and the switch drops, the lamp cools, the needle falls to rest. Clicking the 3D switch while a drone plays cuts the power honestly. The machine listens to itself.

04 · Asset pipeline

Three images were generated (Higgsfield MCP, model nano_banana_pro, 2K), then optimized to responsive WebP with sharp. The instrument itself ships no textures — walnut grain, faceplate print and VU dial are drawn on canvases at runtime.

05 · Iteration diary