The Holocene ProjectAbout
A small project with a large aim.
The Holocene Project is an independent project led by Sean. The aim is a world rebuilt accurately enough to live in: its ground, climate, plants, animals and people, from 11,700 years ago to now. That span is the Holocene, the age since the ice sheets melted, and it gives the project its name. It is a for-profit project: the models, the game and the mod market are sold to pay for the work, and the record of where everything comes from stays public.
How it is made
Tools, machines and data
Code written by AI agents, directed by Sean
The pipelines, tools and game code are written by AI coding agents (Claude Code and Gemini) working to Sean's direction and review. Every step is a script, so it can be run again, checked and improved.
Models from scans and measurements
Animal shapes come from 3D scans and published measurements, and coats from the scans' own surfaces. No image or 3D generator makes any part of a model.
Blender and Unreal Engine 5
Models are built and rendered in Blender and brought into Unreal Engine 5 for the game. The source files stay engine-free.
One PC and rented machines
Renders and Unreal work run on one desktop PC with an RTX 3060. Long Blender jobs run on rented cloud servers, which are deleted when idle.
What we hold to
Rules the build follows
Every claim is true of the build
Drafts are labelled as drafts, and known gaps are named in captions.
Every source named
Each dataset, scan and paper is listed with its licence and credit on the sources page.
Rules, not hand-tuning
Every shape, material and setting comes from a rule or a measurement, so the next species is built the same way.
No prices or dates until they are set
Nothing here is on sale yet.