VOID HORIZON

CHILDREN OF THE ARK · a sci-fi RPG

In the far future, the Ark ships carry the last of humanity — and more — across a dying universe. Immortals awakened from cryogenic slumber explore lost worlds, wield reality-altering powers, and shape the fate of civilizations. Every model, world, and character below is generated in-house by a local neural pipeline and rendered in-engine — no stock assets.

a warship opening fire over a living planet, escort and starbase behind — IN-ENGINE Fleet strike off the Freehold Exchange · rendered in-engine

The galaxy, taking shape

two capital ships trading energy fire — Ship combat — capital ships trade beam & torpedo fire

cryo bay interior with PBR decks, sleep pods and a planet through the glazing — Living worlds — PBR decks and walls, lit machinery, planets through the glazing

the live on-foot walk — a forged body standing on a lit hangar deck beside a parked craft — On-foot exploration — the live walk, your forged body, vehicles on the pad

neural character cast — The cast — portrait-faithful, rigged, animated

six playable body archetypes captured mid-run — Playable bodies — 29 forged creator bases, rigged and running

six forged ground vehicles — walker, tank, strider, warhound, scout car, skiff — Forged vehicles — walkers, war-rigs and skiffs, all drivable

five wardrobe looks — street clothes, officer coat, stillsuit, power armor, xelomite weave — Wardrobe — morphable garments over any body

movement animation states — Animation — walk / run / jump / slide / dodge / melee

The galaxy — 13 star systems, one map

Every faction seated in a canon star system — Council at Sol behind the Gap and Radiance, FreeSpace on the frontier, the new Reaches (Datasphere, Verdant, Peck) in deep space, the roaming Shadow Armada, and Diego Station the neutral crossroads where everyone trades. Populated live in-engine (galaxy_map.gd) with per-faction reputation.

Illustrated map of the Void Horizon galaxy — Council core at Sol behind the Gap and Radiance, FreeSpace frontier, the Reaches, Diego Station, the drifting Ark, and the looming Shadow Armada — THE GALAXY 13 star systems, every faction seated — Council at Sol, FreeSpace’s frontier, the new Reaches, Diego the neutral hub, and the Shadow Armada closing in

Every forged model — the full neural-forge roster

The entire forged cast — characters, ships, gear, and surface vehicles — each rendered live in-engine (front / three-quarter / side) with the anti-aliased pipeline. Click any model to zoom to full-res.

Render R&D — pushing model fidelity

Chasing the best our open-source AI pipeline can produce — detail and motion. Overnight, one hero character (aegis-7) was forged through four image→3D engines from the same driver, rigged, and compared side-by-side. Full write-up & reproducible pipeline recipes: docs/visual-quality-north-star.md.

aegis-7 forged by four engines: current Hunyuan, TRELLIS.2 512, TRELLIS.2 1024, TripoSG — **Four engines, one character.** A: current Hunyuan (in-game) · B: TRELLIS.2 @512 · C: TRELLIS.2 @1024 · D: TripoSG. Tap to zoom.

Engine variants. Each strip is independently zoomable; the TripoSG pass now includes its first Hunyuan-Paint texture pass rather than the white geometry-only snapshot above.

aegis-7 rendered with the current Hunyuan engine — **Hunyuan** · current baseline

aegis-7 rendered with TRELLIS.2 at 512 resolution — **TRELLIS.2 @512** · PBR geometry

aegis-7 rendered with TRELLIS.2 at 1024 resolution — **TRELLIS.2 @1024** · highest-detail texture

aegis-7 rendered with textured TripoSG geometry — **TripoSG** · textured first pass

Findings. TRELLIS.2 @1024 is the best textured result out of the box — a free, ~1-minute fidelity bump over the current models (the 1024 weights were already on disk). TripoSG produces the cleanest geometry/silhouette (great for faces & proportions); its initial shape-only output is now followed by a first Hunyuan-Paint texture pass. We unblocked it locally by patching it to its own skimage mesh-extractor (sidestepping a CUDA-compiler wall on this box). Next levers, biggest perceived lift first: PBR materials + lighting/post, then engine-side parametric eyes, then an animation graph with retargeted mocap. Detail & recipes in docs/visual-quality-north-star.md.

The game world — locations & regions

Every authored location and every galaxy region, rendered from the same engine the game runs — offscreen, zero-GPU. Tap any to zoom.

Locations — 12 authored scenes

Galaxy regions — 6 star-chart areas

Surface vehicles — the forged fleet

The forged vehicle fleet — All 11 forged vehicles — walkers, tracked tank, wheeled, hover, and skiffs.

The full gallery — 50 in-engine shots

Every frame below is rendered live in the game engine on the dev GPU — forged worlds, ships, and characters. New shots land every build.

The cast — characters & gear

Aegis 7 — early pipeline bust — BEFORE early pipeline — a bust, no legs

Same character forged by the old pipeline vs the new TRELLIS.2 engine — UPGRADE new TRELLIS.2 geometry engine (right) vs the old forge (left) — crisper PBR, re-forging the full cast

Cryo Bay Seven interior — lit hangar with windows onto space, cryo-pod machinery and a rim-lit dais — NEW Cryo Bay Seven — windows onto local space, lit sleep-pod machinery, cinematic tonemap

Three locations rendered with distinct faction palettes — raider rust, verdant green, council blue — NEW every location wears its faction — raider rust roost, verdant dome, council cryo bay

Aiko with parametric procedural eyes across three views — NEW engine-native parametric eyes — socketed geometrically, blinking, on every forged face

Contact sheet of all 62 forged equipment models — NEW the full armory — all 62 forged gear models, now equippable in-game

The fleet — factions & warships

TRELLIS models — the forged fleet (62 ships)

Apotheosis — TRELLIS.2 model render — Apotheosis

Arbiter — TRELLIS.2 model render — Arbiter

Aurora — TRELLIS.2 model render — Aurora

Beacon — TRELLIS.2 model render — Beacon

Behemoth — TRELLIS.2 model render — Behemoth

Bulwark — TRELLIS.2 model render — Bulwark

Cathedral — TRELLIS.2 model render — Cathedral

Cinder — TRELLIS.2 model render — Cinder

Cipher — TRELLIS.2 model render — Cipher

Clipper — TRELLIS.2 model render — Clipper

Continuum — TRELLIS.2 model render — Continuum

Devourer — TRELLIS.2 model render — Devourer

Empyrean — TRELLIS.2 model render — Empyrean

Eternity — TRELLIS.2 model render — Eternity

Faraway — TRELLIS.2 model render — Faraway

Foundry — TRELLIS.2 model render — Foundry

Frontier — TRELLIS.2 model render — Frontier

Genesis — TRELLIS.2 model render — Genesis

Gloaming — TRELLIS.2 model render — Gloaming

Guardian — TRELLIS.2 model render — Guardian

Halcyon — TRELLIS.2 model render — Halcyon

Hivemind — TRELLIS.2 model render — Hivemind

Lattice — TRELLIS.2 model render — Lattice

Leviathan — TRELLIS.2 model render — Leviathan

Lictor — TRELLIS.2 model render — Lictor

Magistrate — TRELLIS.2 model render — Magistrate

Meridian — TRELLIS.2 model render — Meridian

Monolith — TRELLIS.2 model render — Monolith

Obelisk — TRELLIS.2 model render — Obelisk

Odyssey — TRELLIS.2 model render — Odyssey

Praetor — TRELLIS.2 model render — Praetor

Prospect — TRELLIS.2 model render — Prospect

Radiant — TRELLIS.2 model render — Radiant

Reaver — TRELLIS.2 model render — Reaver

Scythe — TRELLIS.2 model render — Scythe

Sentinel — TRELLIS.2 model render — Sentinel

Seraph — TRELLIS.2 model render — Seraph

Singularity — TRELLIS.2 model render — Singularity

Titanhold — TRELLIS.2 model render — Titanhold

Tribune — TRELLIS.2 model render — Tribune

Warden — TRELLIS.2 model render — Warden

Wayfarer — TRELLIS.2 model render — Wayfarer

Worldeater — TRELLIS.2 model render — Worldeater

Xelomite Dread — TRELLIS.2 model render — Xelomite Dread

TRELLIS models — the armory (34 gear pieces)

Angel Plate — TRELLIS.2 model render — Angel Plate

Bio Symbiote — TRELLIS.2 model render — Bio Symbiote

Cloak Emitter — TRELLIS.2 model render — Cloak Emitter

Combat Shield — TRELLIS.2 model render — Combat Shield

Cronium Core — TRELLIS.2 model render — Cronium Core

Data Spike — TRELLIS.2 model render — Data Spike

Energy Blade — TRELLIS.2 model render — Energy Blade

Globals Device — TRELLIS.2 model render — Globals Device

Grapple Launcher — TRELLIS.2 model render — Grapple Launcher

Grav Harness — TRELLIS.2 model render — Grav Harness

Hyperdrive Module — TRELLIS.2 model render — Hyperdrive Module

Jump Boots — TRELLIS.2 model render — Jump Boots

Kinetic Carbine — TRELLIS.2 model render — Kinetic Carbine

Kinetic Sidearm — TRELLIS.2 model render — Kinetic Sidearm

Laser Pistol — TRELLIS.2 model render — Laser Pistol

Laser Rifle — TRELLIS.2 model render — Laser Rifle

Mono Edge — TRELLIS.2 model render — Mono Edge

Navcomp — TRELLIS.2 model render — Navcomp

Neural Jack — TRELLIS.2 model render — Neural Jack

Plasma Repeater — TRELLIS.2 model render — Plasma Repeater

Plated Vest — TRELLIS.2 model render — Plated Vest

Radiance Reliquary — TRELLIS.2 model render — Radiance Reliquary

Railgun — TRELLIS.2 model render — Railgun

Recon Weave — TRELLIS.2 model render — Recon Weave

Rocket Pack — TRELLIS.2 model render — Rocket Pack

Sensor Suite — TRELLIS.2 model render — Sensor Suite

Service Blade — TRELLIS.2 model render — Service Blade

Shield Generator — TRELLIS.2 model render — Shield Generator

Siege Plate — TRELLIS.2 model render — Siege Plate

Stim Injector — TRELLIS.2 model render — Stim Injector

Targeting Visor — TRELLIS.2 model render — Targeting Visor

Thermal Grenade — TRELLIS.2 model render — Thermal Grenade

War Maul — TRELLIS.2 model render — War Maul

Warp Forged Armor — TRELLIS.2 model render — Warp Forged Armor

Locations — in-engine authored scenes

Cryo Bay — in-engine location — Cryo Bay

Ember Wastes — in-engine location — Ember Wastes

Verdant Dock — in-engine location — Verdant Dock

Worlds — procedural biomes

Deep space

Battle

How we’re improving — next steps

The target is the best our open-source AI pipeline can produce — detail and motion. Sequenced by perceived lift per unit of effort. Full detail & recipes: docs/visual-quality-north-star.md.

▶ Model fidelity

PBR materials — albedo + normal + roughness + metallic + AO per zone (skin/cloth/armor); flat shading is most of the “old” tell.
TRELLIS.2 @1024 re-forge pass — the free, proven fidelity bump.
TripoSG geometry + texture bake — cleanest silhouette, textured.
Faces & eyes — engine-side parametric eyes; a better face forge.

◉ Lighting & motion

Lighting + post — SSAO, soft shadows, tonemap, bloom, colour grade (lifts everything, mesh-independent).
Animation graph — blend trees, foot IK, secondary motion; beyond today’s single-pose procedural author.
Retargeted mocap — a library of quality clips onto the standard skeleton = fluid, non-robotic motion.
Per-weapon locomotion + hit/stagger reactions.

◇ Cleanup

Re-render defective models — the stray-vertex mid-render streaks.
Normalize TRELLIS bodies — orientation/scale for drop-in game use.
Portraits from models — every character has a matching face.

Where the game is at

▶ Playable now

Capital-ship fleet battle sim — 7v7 lockstep multiplayer
Character creator + morphable bodies & wardrobe (90+ forged bases)
The full COTA power system — 12 powers, 17 subpowers, skills & specialties, each described, with XP progression
Faction cast forged & playable — Council, the Iron Trail Confederacy, and the Aotearoa / Aethel / Hallyu Reaches
On-foot movement: walk / run / jump / slide / dodge / melee / aim
Data-driven campaign — the game now boots the whole story from editable scenario files (quests, dialogue, the NPC social graph, placement), validated on load like a compiler; the campaign is itself a scenario you can edit
The full armory is live — all 62 forged gear models are equippable Items; the walker holds your equipped weapon, the inventory shows a spinning 3D preview, ranged fire has real tracers from the muzzle, melee swings arc
Every named NPC talks — all 10 anchor NPCs carry authored dialogue trees with motivations, personal stories, and concrete asks that cross-reference each other (the Overseer, the fence, the Shogun, the salvage captain…)
Engine-native eyes — parametric iris/sclera eyes with blinks, geometrically socketed onto forged faces (visor droids correctly keep their visors); NPCs walk arms-at-sides facing their motion
Interior scenes read like places — windows onto local space, lit cryo-pod machinery, per-faction wall palettes (raider rust / verdant green / council blue), exit beacons so you always know how to leave, loading screens on every transition
Continuum Control's Temporal Slip — blink opens a stretched-time window: haste, precognitive evasion, and (level 3+) a stasis snap that freezes your pursuer in the moment you left
Vehicles fight — mounted weapons volley from their hardpoints and land area damage in the on-foot fight; walker mechs stride with an elevated cockpit

◷ In development

TRELLIS.2 image→3D forge — the whole cast (and ships, gear, vehicles) re-forged full-body with hands & feet, now the in-game bodies
Combat rescaled for the live-action game — deeper HP/damage pools, percentage armor, IPL-driven attack speed
Living worlds — props, horizon backdrops, gradient skies, textured walls
TRELLIS.2 geometry engine — a crisper image→3D forge (true PBR, sharper faces & gear) replacing the old muddy pass; re-forging the entire cast
Any forged model is a playable body — pick any of the cast as your on-foot avatar; all can hold gear & wield weapons in hand
Character breathing (environment-aware) & hand-placed gear
Ten new factions across the galaxy — Fringe Raiders, Datasphere AI, Verdant Kin, Peck Enclaves, the Shadow Armada (the antagonist), FreeSpace, Gate Guardians, Outer Rim & Diego Sector — 200+ characters forged & limb-verified (full-body, hands & feet)
Galaxy map — every faction seeded into canon star systems (Linked Space, FreeSpace, Radiance, the Reaches, the mobile Ark) with shared & neutral trade hubs
Faction reputation — per-faction standing with tiers, gating quests & rewards (R-key panel)
COTA-voiced dialogue trees per character (faction · role · personality)
Scenario authoring toolkit — a spec, an offline validator ("cargo build for scenarios"), and an MCP server so an AI can generate a whole adventure and have it checked before it ever loads; an in-game editor to curate it
Gadget-gated stories — gear you carry opens routes (a lock-cracker cracks the vault); weapons carry maker lore tied to their faction
Pose-conditioned re-forging — Hunyuan3D-Omni proven locally: a posed concept image forges into a clean standing A-pose (kills the seated-model defect at the source); TRELLIS now runs its 1024³ grid by default after a decisive face A/B; UniRig learned auto-rigs proven for creatures

◇ On the horizon

Powers: energy beams, gravity/TK blasts, teleport portals
The Warp — a hellish mirror-dimension for FTL travel
Ghost form & body reconstruction after death
Destructible scenes · persistent world state
Share scenarios & models on the Steam Workshop — play adventures other people build

Build log

Aug 19 World atlas + render R&D. Rendered every authored location (12) and every galaxy region (6) from the game engine, plus the full surface-vehicle fleet — all offscreen / zero-GPU. And a 4-engine model-fidelity experiment on one hero character (Hunyuan vs TRELLIS.2 512/1024 vs TripoSG): TRELLIS.2 @1024 is the best textured result, TripoSG the cleanest geometry. Write-up: docs/visual-quality-north-star.md.
Aug 19 On-foot polish & stability. Readied weapons now pose the hands to grip them on-foot (arms take the hold stance, not just carrying the mesh on the wrist). Grit & Sustained are free, always-on baseline subpowers in character creation (checked & locked, and they don’t spend a pick). The in-lab model browser now shows the live TRELLIS roster (241 characters) plus the vehicle & starship fleets, cycled by category. Fixed a grey-screen-on-load (a stale script-class cache, now auto-refreshed every build) and verified the walk / run / grip animation pipeline end-to-end. The 12 authored locations and 6 galaxy regions are rendered as in-engine snapshots.
Aug 19 Surface vehicles + in-engine locations. The 8 ground vehicles & 3 walkers (hover/wheeled/tracked + biped/quad/many-leg) are being forged into TRELLIS models (concept-art → 3D), and the first authored in-engine locations (Cryo Bay, Ember Wastes, Verdant Dock) are rendered from the same engine the game runs. Honest status: characters, starships & base gear are forged; expanded gear + more location scenes are next in the queue.
Aug 19 The game went data-driven. The whole campaign now boots from editable scenario files (quests, dialogue, the NPC social graph, placement) instead of hard-coded story — verified end-to-end, the opening act plays live from the bundle. Shipped alongside: a scenario authoring toolkit (a full spec, an offline validator that gates a bundle like a compiler, and an MCP server so an AI can generate an adventure and have it checked before load), gadget-gated quests (the gear you carry opens new routes), and weapon maker-lore (every gun tied to a manufacturer and its faction). Meanwhile the forge re-rendered the whole ship & equipment roster on TRELLIS.2.
Aug 18 New geometry engine — TRELLIS.2 GGUF. A/B-tested it against the old forge and it wins on every axis (crisper PBR, sharper faces, fits the 16 GB card) — now re-forging the whole cast on it. Also: every forged model is now a selectable player body that holds gear & wields weapons in-hand, and the whole roster was re-rendered as sharp full-body hero shots.
Aug 18 The galaxy tripled — 142 new-faction characters forged overnight (Fringe Raiders, Datasphere AI, Verdant Kin, Peck Enclaves, the Shadow Armada, FreeSpace, Gate Guardians, Outer Rim, Diego Sector), every one geometrically limb-verified (real hands & feet — a new check that caught & re-forged the stumps). Illustrated galaxy map + a reputation system (gated quests, scaled rewards, vendor) shipped alongside.
Aug 17 The galaxy tripled — ten new factions (Fringe Raiders, Datasphere AI, Verdant Kin, Peck Enclaves, the Shadow Armada antagonist, FreeSpace, Gate Guardians of Radiance, Outer Rim, Diego Sector) authored from concept-art montages: 15 factions, 200+ characters, every one crop-guided for the forge.
Aug 17 Galaxy map populated — canon star systems seeded with faction ownership (some shared, Diego Station a neutral all-faction trade hub), 30 locations wired to their inhabitants.
Aug 17 Faction reputation system — per-faction standing with a tier ladder, an R-key reputation panel, and hooks for reputation-gated quests & reputation-scaled rewards.
Aug 17 Full COTA power system overhaul — data-driven catalogs, descriptions on every power/subpower/skill, the specialty system, live XP progression, and a combat rescale (bigger pools, percentage armor, IPL-driven attack speed).
Aug 17 Faction cast forged from concept art — the Council, the steampunk-western Iron Trail Confederacy, and the New Zealand / Japan / Korea Cultural Reaches — via a new image→3D pipeline; the in-game NPCs now wear these new bodies.
Aug 16 Epic in-engine teasers — fleet approach, ship combat, dusk vistas — with specular glints, glow & reflections. Blank-render guard added.
Aug 16 Rigging-based breathing (the ribcage lifts as lungs fill), environment-gated — no breath in vacuum or underwater.
Aug 16 Living worlds — forged props placed in-scene, procedural horizon backdrops + gradient skies, tech-panel & Xelomite-rib walls.
Aug 16 The full character cast is forging overnight — portrait-faithful, rigged, textured, animation-ready.
Aug 15 Neural on-foot bodies live in-game — the realistic pipeline replaced the placeholder rig.

In active development · updated every build. Art & models generated in-house via a local neural pipeline (SDXL → TRELLIS.2 → UniRig), rendered in Godot.