Snow Globe

About this style

Snow globes, water-filled glass spheres holding a small scene and loose flakes, date from 19th-century Europe and became a popular souvenir and winter keepsake in the 20th century. Shaking one sets the water swirling, and the flakes, slightly denser than the water, drift down slowly as the swirl dies away. The water-filled sphere also works as a lens, magnifying the scene inside and focusing light into a bright spot beside it. The tiny village under glass is a fixture of winter shop windows, holiday packaging and seasonal brand films.

Make a 10-second tabletop film of a glass snow globe with a tiny village inside: it rocks, the snow swirls up in a vortex, then drifts down and settles on the roofs.

<inputs>
If I don't give you something, use the default and don't ask.
- Title: "Holmcrest"
- Line: "Winter Market · 6–22 December" (fictional)
- Plaque on the base: HOLMCREST
- Village: five houses, a chapel with a clock steeple, seven fir trees, a lamp post, and a frozen pond with a footbridge.
- Length: 10 seconds.
</inputs>

<direction>
- Look: a product shot at blue hour: cool daylight from a big window on the left, a warm lamp from the right, the globe on a pale oak table, the background soft and out of focus.
- Palette: backdrop #3A4E6E at the top to #6E819C behind the globe; oak #C8A27A with grain; walnut base #4A2F22, satin; brass plaque #C9A45C; water tint #EAF4FF; snow #FFFFFF with blue shadows #C5D3E3; plaster walls cream #EFE3CC, brick red #A8473A and sage #8FA58A; slate roofs #4C5664 under snow #F4F6F8; timber #5B3B2A; lit windows #FFC870; firs #2F5A45; pond ice #B8CFE0; title #F2F4F8, line #C4CEDC.
- The globe: a sphere of radius 1.0 set in a collar on a turned walnut base (LatheGeometry: foot radius 1.05, a cove, a bead and a fillet, 0.55 tall), with the brass plaque engraved HOLMCREST on its front. Model the glass and water as one transmissive sphere (MeshPhysicalMaterial: transmission 1, ior 1.2, thickness 1.0, roughness 0.02, attenuation #EAF4FF at distance 6), so the village shows clearly, slightly magnified, and the table edge behind bends through it. Over it, a shell at radius 1.004 carries the reflections: transparent, roughness 0, a strong clearcoat and Fresnel, showing the window as a crisp rounded rectangle at upper left and a warm highlight on the right edge.
- The village on a snow mound (a dome of radius 0.75 filling the lower half): five houses (box bodies with rounded edges, pitched roofs with overhanging eaves, chimneys, doors, and two to four lit windows each with mullions), a chapel with a steeple and a clock face, seven firs (stacked cones with snow loads on each tier), a lamp post with a small warm PointLight, and a frozen pond with a little arched footbridge. Houses stand 0.12–0.18 tall. Window light falls warm on the snow around them.
- Light: build an environment once with PMREMGenerator.fromScene from a small room: a big cool window panel (#DCE8FF, intensity 4) on the left, a warm lamp panel (#FFC88A) on the right, a dim floor. Key: a cool DirectionalLight from the upper left (intensity 2.2, soft shadows, PCFSoftShadowMap, 2048 map) for the base's soft contact shadow; a warm SpotLight low from the right; HemisphereLight fill at 0.6. ACESFilmic, exposure 1.1. A soft, bright spot of focused light lies on the table on the far side of the globe from the key, as a water-filled sphere throws (an additive elliptical decal at 25%). Everything is clearly lit from the first frame.
- Snow: 3,000 flakes (flat and irregular, 0.006–0.014 across) as an InstancedMesh, white with a little emissive so they never go grey, each tumbling at 0.3–1.2 turns a second so it catches the light. Simulate once at load at a fixed 1/120 s step from t = −2 s: each flake's velocity relaxes toward the water's velocity with a 0.15 s time constant while it sinks at 0.05 units/s; after the rocking, the water swirls about the vertical axis (6 rad/s, decaying as e^(−t ÷ 1.6 s)) and rolls up the middle and down the walls, which decays faster; flakes stay inside radius 0.97, and any flake that touches the mound, a roof or a fir (simple dome, box and cone tests) stops and stays. At the start most flakes rest on the mound and roofs.
- The rocking: the globe tips and rocks on its base three times at 2.2 Hz (tilt ±9°, slide ±0.12), as if nudged by an off-screen hand; the water lags behind the glass, lifting the settled snow into the swirl.
- Camera: fov 30, a three-quarter view 12° above, the globe centered at (1180, 520) and about 640px across, orbiting 10° and pushing in 4% across the piece on easeInOutSine.
- Type (HTML over the canvas): title in Gilda Display 400, 96px, #F2F4F8, baseline at (120, 500) on the backdrop left of the globe; line in Nunito Sans 600, 24px, uppercase, tracked 0.14em, #C4CEDC, beneath. Each rises 12px as it fades in over 1.0 s on cubic-bezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1).
- Premium: glass you believe (a window reflection, a bright rim, the table bending behind it, a focused spot of light), a village with eaves, chimneys and lit mullioned windows, flakes that tumble and glint and settle as the swirl dies. Cheap: a grey see-through ball over a flat house icon, with white dots falling straight down.
Banned: rainbow glitter, hands or people, holiday characters, text inside the globe, snow outside the globe, flakes passing through roofs, glass with no reflections, bloom halos, rocking more than 3 times per second, anything flashing more than 3 times per second.
</direction>

<structure>
- 0.0–1.2s: the globe at rest, snow lying on the mound and roofs, windows lit; the camera begins its orbit.
- 1.2–2.6s: the globe rocks three times on its base; the snow lifts off and the water starts to swirl.
- 2.6–3.8s: a blizzard under glass: flakes whirl around the steeple, glinting as they tumble.
- 3.8–5.2s: the swirl slows; the title and line rise in.
- 5.2–7.6s: the flakes drift down through the lamplight and settle on roofs, firs and the mound.
- 7.6–8.8s: the last of the swirl dies; the camera eases to rest.
- 8.8–10.0s: hold: a few late flakes still drifting down.
For other lengths, stretch the settling; keep the rocking at 2.2 Hz and at least 1 s of hold.
</structure>

<build>
- One self-contained index.html (inline CSS and JS), a 1920×1080 (16:9) stage scaled to fit the window, designed for 60fps. No image, video, texture or model files: every shape and texture is generated in code.
- window.seek(t), t in seconds, computes every visual from t alone: no CSS transitions or CSS animations, no setTimeout/setInterval, no state carried between frames, randomness only from a seeded PRNG. Anything cumulative is solved analytically from t or precomputed once at load at a fixed step. Past the end, seek clamps to the last frame.
- Without ?render in the URL, drive seek from requestAnimationFrame so it plays in a browser (loop after a 1s end hold); with ?render, don't start that loop.
- Google Fonts via <link> are fine; await document.fonts.load() for each face before defining window.seek.
- Engine: three.js as an ES module pinned to three@0.160.0 through an import map on jsDelivr (`three` and `three/addons/`). WebGLRenderer with antialias, preserveDrawingBuffer: true and setPixelRatio(window.devicePixelRatio); render once at the end of every seek. Text is HTML over the canvas.
- The transmissive sphere uses three.js's built-in transmission pass, which already includes the village and flakes behind the glass. Flake states are read from the precomputed arrays; the rocking, orbit and swirl are closed-form functions of t.
</build>

<check>
Before showing me, step through one frame per second (t = 0…10): screenshot each and look at it. Fix overlaps, clipped or cramped text, and anything off-style or Banned. Check the glass shows the window reflection, a bright rim and the table bending behind it in every frame, the village is clearly visible through the glass, no flake leaves the sphere or sinks into a roof, the rocking stays at 2.2 Hz, and the title sits clear of the globe. Confirm seek(10) and seek(11) match, so the final frame holds.
</check>

Ours, and free to use under CC0: copy it, change it, ship it. No credit needed.

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