Capability · Systemcraft
Cinematic builds
The demo you just scrolled is a working reference build, not a mockup. This page is the part that usually goes unsaid: what the technique actually is, what it costs in weight and time, and the cases where it is the wrong thing to buy.
What it is
- A pre-rendered image sequence, scrubbed by scroll. The hyper-real look in the opening act is not real-time 3D — it is frames rendered offline and painted one per scroll position. All the expensive lighting was resolved before the visitor arrived.
- Real-time 3D where interaction matters. Compressed geometry, lit at runtime, camera on a track. Used when a visitor needs to look around a thing rather than watch a rehearsed shot of it.
- Effects that go past the reference. The disintegrate-and-rebuild act is GPU particle work the award-winning site this was measured against does not do at all.
What it takes
The honest constraint is not the code. It is art direction and render time — deciding what object is worth holding still, then building and lighting it. The engineering here is finished and reusable; every subject in the demo is a deliberate stand-in.
When this is the wrong buy
- Nobody can find you yet. If the site does not rank for its own name, a heavier homepage is negative leverage. Fix reach first — this work makes an audience convert, it does not create one.
- The page has to load on a bad connection in a warehouse. Streaming and reduced-motion paths help, but physics is physics.
- The content changes weekly. Rendered sequences are baked. If the hero subject changes constantly, this is the wrong shape.
What it costs
From $4,500, two to three weeks, for one subject. That is the same floor as a whole website build, because it is the same thirty hours: art direction and lighting, the two rendered sequences, the integration, and the measured pass at the end. The chassis on this page is already built and reusable, so nobody pays to invent it twice. Through 31 Oct 2026 the founding-client rate takes 20% off the build, in exchange for permission to say what I built and who I built it for.
- One subject means one object, authored and lit, rendered as two sequences — landscape for desktop and a re-framed portrait for phones, not a crop. A second subject, or a second act like the dissolve below, is quoted separately.
- The site around it is not included. This is a hero for a page that already exists or is being built alongside it. A website on its own starts at $4,500.
- Render time is machine time, not billed hours — about two and a half hours for both sequences, unattended. What costs is deciding what is worth holding still.
- It is for a business people already arrive at, with one thing worth holding still: a product, a machine, a room. It makes an audience convert; it does not create one.