The Holocene ProjectAnimal library · first model in production
Every animal, rebuilt from the evidence.
Each species starts from a real 3D scan or published measurements, a skeleton measured to the animal and photographs to check against. The first one through is the red fox.
The drawer
Species in the pipeline.
One animal at a time, each from its own real scan. Recolouring one species into another does not work, so every species waits for a scan of its own.
Red fox
In productionFrom a CC BY scan: rigged, furred, with 105 movement clips generated on its measured skeleton. The paws and some leg poses are being fixed before it can sell.
Common raven
Feathers passedFrom a CC0 museum scan. The first bird: its feather layer beat the bare scan, and a species-recognition model places it with the ravens in all six test views, in Blender and in Unreal. Eye size is measured from real photographs.
Moose (Eurasian elk)
In testingFrom a CC BY scan of a bull, matching in Blender and in Unreal. Walk and trot are in testing; its gait numbers are still estimates until measured moose data is found.
Grey wolf
HeldBuilt from measurements and photographs over 18 versions, before the scan route proved faster. Held until the fox is done.
What one scan does
One scan beat everything we had built by rule.
The same red fox, scored by a species-recognition model (BioCLIP 2) choosing among 18 look-alike species. Left: the fox we built from rules and trait data in October. Right: one raw scan of a mounted fox, before any of our work on it.
Chance a species-recognition model (BioCLIP 2) names it a red fox among 18 look-alikes, over six standard studio views. The furred fox is the mean of five lighting runs (±1.7). The rule-built fox was lit in a different studio, so read the direction more than the exact gap. Real photographs (156 of them, in their own scenes) are shown for reference: they are the bar. Passing a species check is not the same as looking right, so it is one test among several. The face, where taxidermy sculpts the muzzle, is where partner data matters most.
What one scan became
From a free test scan to a fox that trots.
The red fox started as one scan of a mounted fox, shared under CC BY 4.0. Everything after that is our pipeline, and the same pipeline runs for the next species.
The scan
The mount's shape and its real surface colour, as photographed. Stiff, with no skeleton inside.
Skeleton and coat
Bones measured inside the scan, a rig, and fur grown from the scan's own surface. In a studio test the coat lifted the species score from 0.51 to 0.78.
Motion
105 clips, from walk and gallop to sitting, growling and yawning, generated on the fox's own skeleton at real speeds and strides.
Still open before it can sell: the paws, and legs that push through the coat in some poses. Both are on the build progress page.
How a model is made
One pipeline, run again for every species
The steps are code, so each species goes through the same checks, and a fix to the pipeline improves every animal built on it.
Scan
A 3D scan of the real animal, a mount or a skeleton, with its licence recorded. Where no scan exists, published measurements set the shape.
Skeleton
Bones measured inside the scan, with the same bone names across every species of a body plan.
Skin and rig
Weights solved from poses, so the body bends at the joints without folding or poking through.
Coat
Fur grown from the scan's own surface colour, kept only if it scores better than the bare scan.
Gaits
Walk, trot, lope and gallop generated on that skeleton at the species' real speeds and strides, plus behaviours such as sitting, growling and yawning.
Checks
Every clip is checked for feet sliding, body poking through the coat, and how strongly a species-recognition model names the render.
Export
The Blender source file, levels of detail and an Unreal-ready export.
The source card
Every number says where it came from
Each animal carries a record of its measurements, the photographs it was fitted to and the licence of each one. When nobody has measured something, the card says so instead of guessing quietly.
This is the card for the grey wolf, which we built from measurements before the scan route proved faster. Its figures come from the wolf account in Heptner and Naumov.
- Body mass, adult male
- 40–45 kg
- Head and body
- 118–137 cm
- Tail
- 42–52 cm
- Hind foot
- 25–26 cm
- Ear
- 12.7 cm
- Skull, greatest length
- 257–267 mm
- Model skull length
- 262 mm
- Reference photographs
- 22, licence each
Heptner V.G. & Naumov N.P. (eds) 1998, Mammals of the Soviet Union, vol. II part 1a, wolf account. No Ice Age Scandinavian wolf has been measured, so these are living Eurasian wolves, marked on the card as an analogue. The model's skull sits between the tundra and Taimyr male means. Spine proportions were measured off mounted skeletons.
Who it is for
Anyone who needs the animal to be right
Game studios
Hunting, survival and open-world games where players know what a reindeer looks like at a run.
Film and VFX
Background wildlife that holds up in a documentary or a period drama.
Museums and education
Animals of past ages, including extinct ones, built to the measurements.
Research and AI training
Synthetic pictures of named species for training wildlife detectors on camera traps and drones.
Planned
What each model will include
Blender source
The full working file, editable and engine-free.
Standard skeleton
The same bone names across a body plan, so animations and tools carry over between species.
Gaits
Real-speed movement cycles for the species.
Levels of detail
From close-up hero to far herd.
Source card
Every measurement and photograph, cited.
A clear licence
Built only from open sources and our own work, so the rights are clean.
Not on sale yet, and pricing is not set. The build progress tab shows where the first models are.
Why we need help
Open data runs out exactly where realism starts.
Trait tables give us the size and shape of every species. Looking real takes a captured surface: a scan of the actual animal. Scroll through what exists.
About 47,700 animal species have a rough draft in our tables. Each dot is one of them.
About 155 open scans. That is how many whole-body, textured scans of vertebrates we found that we are allowed to build a sold model from. Give each one a dot and that is how far they reach: about one species in 300.
About 15 of those are standing mammals like our fox. Most of the rest are birds.
No wolf. We searched every open collection we could reach. Without a scan we built 18 versions of a grey wolf from photographs and published measurements, and none looked right. The wolf is on hold.
Buying doesn't fix it. None of the paid stock licences we checked lets anyone resell a changed model. The missing scans, footage and measurements sit with the people who care for and study these animals.
Counted on Sketchfab in November 2026 by looking at every candidate, the biggest open pool we searched. MorphoSource had no open, sellable vertebrate meshes. Lists and method are in the build records.
What we are looking for
The data open sources don't have.
Every animal we build is checked against the real one. These are the places where our checks fail for lack of data, and where a partner's collection, footage or notes would make the biggest difference.
Mounts, skulls and skeletons
One phone photo-scan of a mounted fox gave us its shape and colour in a single step. Scans of other species would do the same for them.
Animals moving
Side-on walks, trots and gallops on known ground. We measure stride, speed and leg angles from the frames and build the gaits from those numbers.
Feet, faces and mouths
Photographs or casts of paws, pads, teeth and lips. No open dataset covers these well.
Measurements and notes
Body masses, limb lengths, coat samples and observations from keepers, vets and field researchers.
Coverage
Rough drafts for about 47,700 species.
A generator turns open trait data into a rough draft of every species: right size, right proportions, right body plan. Drafts are the starting point the pipeline refines. They are not the finished product.
| Group | Species drafted | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| Land mammals | 4,431 | PHYLACINE, COMBINE |
| Bats | 1,162 | PHYLACINE, COMBINE |
| Sea mammals | 128 | PHYLACINE, COMBINE |
| Kangaroos and kin | 106 | PHYLACINE, COMBINE |
| Birds | 11,525 | AVONET, AVOTREX; plumage colour from the HBW plate set (CC0) |
| Fish | 11,502 | FISHMORPH, Rabosky et al. |
| Reptiles | 12,060 | ReptTraits |
| Amphibians | 6,756 | AmphiBIO |
| Insects, spiders, crabs, shellfish | 80 | A chosen list: eaten, used, traded, harmful or seen every day |