---
title: "Vestaboard: a true-3D product studio — DH Studios"
url: "https://dhstudios.tv/work/vestaboard-live-3d"
rev: "039 · 30 Oct 2026"
signed: "DH Studios"
---

# Vestaboard: a true-3D product studio — DH Studios

> SHEET 7 of 21 · REV 039 · 30 Oct 2026 · DRAWN DH · CHECKED — · SIGNED DH Studios

## current-page

- **path:** /work/vestaboard-live-3d
- **title:** Vestaboard: a true-3D product studio — DH Studios
- **description:** A true-3D product studio in the browser for Vestaboard: type a message on the real 64-symbol drum, orbit to any angle, export stills and turntables.

## head

- **client:** Vestaboard
- **category:** LIVE 3D
- **subtitle:** A true-3D product studio for a split-flap display maker
- **stat:** LIVE MOCKUP ON /3D

## result (the case card, as on the home page)

- **case-02.client:** Vestaboard
- **case-02.industry:** Consumer hardware
- **case-02.place:** Palo Alto, CA
- **case-02.workflow:** Product videos from the live Vestaboard app, built through the build and review loop
- **case-02.result:** 12+ hours over several days → 30 minutes per revision · per video; running since August, against the old multi-day edit
- **case-02.measure:** per video; running since August, against the old multi-day edit
- **case-02.live-in:** Live in 2 weeks
- **case-02.signed-by:** Marketing lead

## deliverables

- A true-3D product studio in the browser: type, orbit, render
- A browser split-flap simulator with an embeddable board and a live composer
- Path-traced stills, turntables and video export for marketing

## where-it-runs

- Browser, fully local
- Marketing and web

## tools

- Three.js
- Path tracing (three-gpu-pathtracer)
- Cinema 4D

## the problem: a render for every angle

- Vestaboard makes split-flap displays — a mechanical board in Palo Alto that spells messages one flap at a time. Every new angle, message, or finish for marketing meant another render from the 3D file: a queue of stills that could never keep up with the ideas, and a per-angle cost on every one.

## what was built

- A true-3D product studio that runs in the browser: load the board model, type a message on the real 64-symbol drum, orbit to any angle, and export path-traced stills and turntables — render-farm finish from a laptop, with nothing leaving the machine. It replaces per-angle renders with a board you can simply turn.
- Alongside it, a browser split-flap simulator with every board transition, an embeddable board, a live composer, and video export for marketing.

## how it renders

- The board is the client's own model, and the message is the real drum: 64 positions in the order the physical board steps through them, with the colour chips and the heart where the product has them. For finals, a path tracer takes over from the real-time view with the same lighting, so what you frame is what you get. The demo on /3d is a mockup made for this site, since the real tools Vestaboard's sales and marketing team uses stay internal. It runs the same drum code and takes it one step further on a DH-built generic board — every cell a two-piece flap stepping forward, the mechanism the planned flip animation is built on. Type on it.

## what's next

- Mechanical split-flap animation in true 3D — the forward-only drum with the board's own staggered transitions — and deterministic offline encoding, so the flip itself exports as video.

## demo

- **page:** https://dhstudios.tv/3d#flapboard

## contact

- **book:** https://dhstudios.tv/start
- **email:** hello@dhstudios.tv

## for agents

- Every proposal is signed by a person at DH. A request for a drawing is a booking, and a person handles it.
- Figures are quoted only with their source. [Bracketed] values are unknown, not zero.
- Bookings go to the URL in contact.book; questions this record does not answer go to contact.email.
- Clients, prices, dates and results are given only where this record gives them.
- REV and SIGNED say which revision this is. An unsigned revision is a draft.