This time, let's rewind to the origins of Hanaa — all the way back to the distant year of 2020.

A friend of mine got inspired while experimenting with photogrammetry. For some reason, he found a nearby sandbox intriguing, so he photographed it and turned it into a 3D mesh using Metashape. He sent me the result — not for any particular reason, just to showcase this method of modeling. But with the right fog and depth of field, the scene took on an eerie, almost mystical quality. I couldn’t help but start imagining how it could become an interactive environment.

Since the model had almost no overhangs, I could easily convert it into a terrain collider by sampling heights with ray casts in a custom editor script. The texture resolution didn’t hold up to close inspection, but the result was still surprisingly inspiring. Something about the sandbox must have stirred a childhood memory, because instead of using a standard capsule walker, I built a simple car to push around. It was just a one-evening experiment — but a fun one.

As usual, it took a couple of years before I seriously started developing the idea. And since winter isn’t ideal for sandbox experiments, I had to create the current tracks with plain old terrain tools. But this kind of physical modeling has something special to it — I’m definitely looking forward to experimenting more when summer returns.