[01] NOTES ENGINEERING
We moved into Three.js
Our newer sites are built around real-time 3D and motion. What changed, what we learned building Halden and Belle-Rive, and where we draw the line.
For most of our history a "nice" website meant clean type, good photos and a layout that held up on a phone. That is still the floor. Over the last few months we have been pushing past it, into sites that feel like a place you move through instead of a page you scroll.
The tool behind most of it is Three.js, the library that puts real-time 3D in the browser. Pair it with smooth scrolling, scroll-driven animation and a few modern CSS features, and a site can react to the visitor as they go: a camera that drifts as you read, a scene that changes with the time of day, type that settles into place instead of just appearing.
Two sites that show it
Halden is a style study built like an architect's drawing set, where the page draws itself line by line as you move down it. Belle-Rive is a site for an orchard in Saint-Aurèle, with motion that follows the seasons and a calm, slow rhythm that suits a place people visit to pick apples. Both are live, and both are the kind of work we want to be doing more of.
Where we draw the line
None of this is worth much if the site gets slow or hard to use. Every piece of motion has a still version for people who turn animation off, the 3D only loads after the page is readable, and phones get a lighter version so the battery and the data plan survive. If an effect makes a page harder to use, it comes out, however good it looks.
If you want a site that feels like this for your own business, tell us what you have in mind. Projects start at $2,000 USD, and we will tell you honestly whether 3D is the right call or just a nice extra.