KARESANSUI · raked sand at dusk
A dry garden as the sun goes down. The sand is a single flat plane and every raked line is computed: each point measures its distance to the nearest ring of moss, takes a cosine of it to form the rings around the stones, then after five tines blends into straight lines — where two groups of rings meet, a pointed seam forms on its own. That height field is baked into a normal map, the low sun grazes it from the right, and every groove shows its lit and shaded side while the stones cast long shadows to the left. The maple in the corner runs from crimson to gold; its leaves spiral down, rest on the sand for a moment and return. The lantern flame and the row of shoji glow warm in the dusk. Sand, stones, crown and every leaf are computed in the browser — no models, no textures.
Loading…
Failed to load
Something went wrong fetching resources. You can retry.
The grooves are five centimetres deep and half a tine wide; pushing real vertices would cost the sand over eighty thousand triangles. Instead the same height field is baked into a normal map on a flat plane with anisotropic filtering maxed out — the lines stay crisp at a grazing angle, and the geometry is two triangles.
The rings reach out exactly five tines, so the outermost one lands on a crest before blending into straight lines. Miss by half a tine and a half-groove breaks off at the seam, as if the rake had slipped.
With reduced motion preferred, the falling leaves hang in mid-air, the flame stops flickering and the clouds hold still; what remains is still a garden you can drag and zoom.
