Turn images into 3D meshes for historical worlds
LucidBox converts photographs, paintings, and reference images into game-ready 3D meshes — powering the recreation of lost cities in Unreal Engine 5.
See how it works Part of TimeWalkAbout
LucidBox is a tool for turning 2D imagery into usable 3D geometry. Feed it a portrait, a photograph of a building, or a historical illustration, and it produces a textured 3D mesh ready for downstream work — rigging, animation, and placement in a real-time engine. It was built to solve a practical problem: historical recreation projects need thousands of period-accurate assets, and hand-modeling each one doesn't scale.
How It Works
From a flat image to a living character or building in four steps.
Image
Start with a photograph, painting, engraving, or any reference image of a person, object, or structure.
3D Mesh
LucidBox generates a textured 3D mesh from the image — geometry and materials included.
Mixamo Rig
Character meshes are rigged via Mixamo for skeletal animation — walk cycles, gestures, idles.
Unreal Engine 5
The rigged asset drops into UE5, where it joins fully explorable historical environments.
Part of TimeWalk
LucidBox is a core tool in the TimeWalk project — an effort to rebuild historical Manhattan and Boston as explorable, period-accurate 3D worlds in Unreal Engine 5. Assets produced with LucidBox populate TimeWalk's streets, harbors, and interiors with the people and objects of the past.
Explore the project, browse the research wiki, and see the worlds LucidBox helps build.
Contribute to the TimeWalk Asset Catalog
We're building a portal where historians, artists, and 3D modellers can submit period-accurate assets to the TimeWalk Asset Catalog — and see their work appear in the recreated city. Check back soon.