ScenarioExplorations
A Scenario exploration · papercraft film · 0:15
A folded-paper harbour town wakes at dawn. A paper sailboat casts off, crosses layered paper waves past a striped lighthouse, and a paper sun rises on a stick.
One prompt. One agent, Claude Opus 5.5, built it in Blender in 82 minutes, one fix pass included. Scenario drew the shop fronts and signs, turned concepts into the props, made the paper stocks and the music and sound effects.
Frame 345 of 360 · the final render
01 · The film
The camera drifts along the quay with real miniature depth of field, following the sailboat out of the harbour. Every sound is placed on its second. Click a cue on the tape to jump to it.
Under it all: pizzicato strings and celesta by ElevenLabs Music v2, and a lapping-water bed by ElevenLabs Sound Effects 2.
02 · One prompt
The agent ran headless on one Mac with Blender 5.2, the Scenario Blender Plugin and the Scenario MCP. It named the town and the shops itself, and chose every model.
“PAPER HARBOR. 15 seconds, one continuous shot. A cosy tabletop diorama of a folded-paper harbour town at dawn, papercraft style with tilt-shift miniature depth of field. Paper waves ripple in layers, paper boats bob and one sails out of the harbour, a paper lighthouse beam turns, gulls on thin wires flap, and a paper sun on a rod rises behind the town. Soft warm studio light, visible paper grain and folds. Sound: light pizzicato strings and celesta, paper rustle, gentle waves and a gull cry.”
The brief, from the prompt the session received
03 · The high street
GPT Image 2 drew each shop as a flat, full-bleed front elevation so it could wrap a folded-card house without distortion. Open a shop to read the exact prompt.
GPT Image 2 · high
“Flat straight-on front elevation of a single papercraft shop front … Cream paper wall, a large bay window displaying little paper loaves and buns, a teal paper door, a coral and white striped folded paper awning, a hand-cut paper sign above the window reading exactly ‘FOLDWICK BAKERY’ in friendly serif letters, upper floor with two small sash windows with paper flower boxes.”
GPT Image 2 · high
“… Sage green paper wall, a mustard yellow folded paper awning, a window with tiny paper teacups and a teapot, a cream door with a round window, a hand-cut paper sign reading exactly ‘CREASE & KETTLE’ with a small line ‘TEA ROOM’ beneath, upper floor with one wide window and a little paper plant.”
GPT Image 2 · high
“… Deep navy blue paper wall, a cream paper sign board with coral letters reading exactly ‘TIDEWELL CHANDLERY’, a shop window showing a coil of paper rope, a small lantern and a life ring, a coral door, upper floor with two arched windows with cream frames.”
GPT Image 2 · high
“… Soft coral salmon paper wall, a teal and cream striped awning, a fish-shaped cut paper sign reading exactly ‘GULLWING FISH CO.’, a counter window with little paper fish on crushed paper ice, a navy door, upper floor with a round porthole window.”
GPT Image 2 · high
“… Warm mustard yellow paper wall, a dark teal paper shopfront frame, a window stacked with tiny paper books, a hand-cut paper sign reading exactly ‘DRIFTPAPER BOOKS’, a cream door, upper floor with a small balcony and two windows with teal shutters.”
Every prompt opens with the same line: “Flat straight-on front elevation of a single papercraft shop front … the facade fills the entire image edge to edge, orthographic view with no perspective.”
04 · The props
For each hero prop, GPT Image 2 made a product photo of a handmade paper model. Scenario's recommend tool ranked the image-to-3D models, and the agent spread the props across four of them. Each mesh replaced a grey proxy through a plugin asset slot.
GPT Image 2 concept · Hunyuan 3D 3.1 Pro, PBR, 400k faces
Came with its own paper-rock base. The lantern glass was made to glow in Blender after the second review.
GPT Image 2 concept · Hunyuan 3D 3.1 Pro, 300k faces
A shoot-out: the same concept also went to Tripo 3.1. Hunyuan won, cleaner at 300k triangles against 1.9 million.
Meshy 7.1, PBR
Moored at the quay, decimated to 25% so the scene stayed responsive.
Rodin Gen-2.5, high
Crates, barrels and rope along the promenade.
Tripo 3.1 mesh · Tripo Rigging, idle
Concept drawn in a T-pose for rigging. Two text-to-motion attempts failed and were refunded, so the goodbye wave was keyed by hand on one arm.
05 · The paper stocks
PATINA Material generated five full PBR sets; the plugin applied them, and each paper colour in the scene is a tinted copy. Scenario Texture printed the three origami boat papers.
PATINA Material · full PBR set
“Brown kraft corrugated cardboard sheet, faint corrugation ridges showing through the paper surface, fibrous recycled texture, matte”
Became the diorama board and the stone course lines of the quay
06 · Light and clay
Scenario Skybox GPT painted a craft studio at dawn and HDRI Skybox turned it into the world light. Drag the panorama to look around the room.
The model returned 8-bit previews only, so the world light stayed low and the warm raking key light carries the dawn direction.
Geometry, animation, cameras and lights are Python in Blender: 17 scalloped wave strips, 15 folded-card houses, origami boats and gulls on wires. Scenario supplied what the clay lacks: the art on every front, the paper, the props and the sound.
Drag the divider, or focus it and use the arrow keys.
07 · The review loop
The agent sent test renders to Scenario's analysis tools. Asset analyze, briefed as an art director, scored four criteria out of 10. Each note below, and what the agent did about it.
First critique · key light only
Second critique
Quality Gate
98/100
Pass on frame 75 of the final render, before the fix pass. A render near the end of the shot had passed at 96.
Asset caption read a render back as “a papercraft-style coastal village… layered blue paper waves”. Asset describe called the backdrop “Dreamy Watercolor Pastels”.
08 · The one fix
The finished film went to a human review with one note: seat the lighthouse on the water, raise the sailboat. The agent measured before it moved anything, and changed nothing else.
Same timing, camera, lights and soundtrack. The re-render took 5 min 51 s.
09 · The sound
ElevenLabs Music v2 wrote three takes. The first had a 1.4-second near-silent hole at 4.8 s, found with a silence detector, so the agent asked again. ElevenLabs Sound Effects 2 made the rest.
10 · The build
The agent recorded its own timelapse as it worked: 186 frames from one fixed camera, each stamped with the step it had just finished, from grey blocking to the last light. The later fix pass wrote no timelapse frames.
11 · Make your own
The skill packages this workflow for an agent connected to the Scenario MCP: build the diorama at real miniature scale, draw the fronts flat, turn concepts into slotted props, tint generated paper stocks, review renders, and time the sound to the frame.
SKILL.md, references for the diorama build and the review loop, and scripts generalised from the session: timelapse stamping, paper materials, cut strips, hull clearance, the cue mix and the encode.
Download the skill ↓ PDF · illustratedThe brief, the high street, the props, the paper, the review notes and the one fix, the sound, and the receipt.
Read the making-of ↗ Video · 2:34 · narratedEleven short chapters, narrated: the set, the high street, the props, the paper, the light, the review, the one fix, the sound.
Watch the video ▸Your harbour, your shop signs, your sun on a stick.
Make yours