We turned handmade art dolls into playable 3D characters in the browser

Description and use

We turned handmade dolls into 3D characters playable in a browser, optimizing textures and load size.

Problem

Convert physical handmade art dolls into interactive 3D characters that can be explored in a browser-based world.

Outcome

Doll World loads in 41.7 MB for the portal build (down from 98.7 MB) while maintaining full‑resolution textures for the main world. Quadruped dolls are parked for future processing, and texture LODs keep mobile asset size manageable.

Workflow

• Select maker’s photos ensuring recognizability
• Reconstruct doll into canonical standing pose, normalise background, pose, lighting
• Rig and animate with stock clips (idle, walk, run, sit, wave, dance)
• Quality gate: verify colour match, feet on ground plane, remove display stand
• Install as floor‑anchored GLB with LODs

Evidence

Not every doll can be rigged (yet)

Source

One texture was 86% of a 22MB asset

Source

First load was 98.7MB

Source