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Show HN: Diorama – Draw a world, play it with point and click

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Screenshot of Show HN: Diorama – Draw a world, play it with point and click

Diorama is a tool for turning a sketch or a one-sentence idea into a small, playable paper-theatre world in a web browser. Its models interpret the input, devise places and story elements, paint scenes in a cut-paper style, and separate objects, floors, and water into layers. Depth and masks determine how characters move, what appears in front of or behind other elements, and which objects can be picked up. The result can include animated scenery, dialogue, sound, and interactive items - not just a flat illustration. Code checks whether story endings are reachable and has bots walk through and use each place, with failed results repaired automatically or passed to an agent.

The featured example, Paper Boat Storm, follows a girl carrying a paper-boat letter to a lighthouse keeper as a storm gathers. Its three settings include a quay, a waterfall and mill, and a lighthouse rock; the demonstration shows details from the drawings translated into walkable scenery, such as a rope bridge and a sweeping beam. A typical four-place world takes about 17 minutes and roughly 200 model calls. Diorama was built for the 2026 Meta AI Global Hackathon and runs locally as a command-line tool with a browser-based Studio for building and editing worlds. Users need Node 22, FFmpeg, and a Meta model API key; optional services add sound and 3D characters. Worlds can be exported as static web pages. The showcased sketches were AI-generated, and some details in the finished demonstration were manually touched up.

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