# Prehistoric island in an ocean cutaway

> A miniature island in a rounded block of sea with a see-through underwater cutaway, from the same prompt on two models side by side: Opus 5 made a volcanic island for $1.6, and Opus 5.5 a richer one with sea life, mammoths, and northern lights for $3.4.

- Kind: Game
- Live game: https://claude.ai/artifact/1vGCqzE7aDVRnGuWdbnYm8
- Page: https://meetreference.com/v/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/
- Ready-to-use agent handoff: https://meetreference.com/v/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/agent.txt
- Exact prompt as plain text: https://meetreference.com/v/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/prompt.txt
- Authorship: Not stated
- Made with: Not stated
- Model: Claude Opus 5, Claude Opus 5.5
- Built with: Three.js
- Style: 3D worlds; three.js, diorama, island, dinosaurs, underwater, cutaway, model comparison
- Shared by @vib3coded in X, Sep 22, 2026: https://x.com/vib3coded/status/2102450239923720440
- Prompt fidelity: Verbatim. This is the complete prompt exactly as the creator published it.

## Before you start

Guidance from Reference, separate from the creator's instructions.

1. Read the reference and inspect the project, installed libraries, and available agent skills before writing code. Reuse suitable tools already present.
2. Prefer the creator-reported libraries and skills when they fit the task. Explain what useful additions help with, and install missing project dependencies or relevant skills from official sources when the environment and the user's existing permissions allow it. Respect the project's package manager and setup rules; do not ask again for routine setup already authorized.
3. Distinguish tools used by the creator from your own recommendations. A listed tool is not automatically required, and an empty tools or requirements list means the setup is unknown, not that nothing is needed.
4. Ask concise questions when missing inputs or choices materially affect the result: paid services, credentials, the user's assets, or a different production approach. Use existing answers and permissions; continue independent work while waiting.
5. If a useful library, skill, or service cannot be installed or used, explain an available alternative and its expected effect on quality, features, or effort. Get the user's choice before a material compromise; otherwise state the fallback and continue. Never silently simplify the result or claim to have used a tool you did not use.

## Recreating this game

These are the creator's published instructions, unedited.

To adapt it: Change "prehistoric island" and the DINOSAURS section to another world, and keep the WATER CROSS-SECTION section, which makes the see-through block of ocean around it.

## Prompt

```text
Create a beautiful, highly detailed, fully interactive 3D prehistoric island using Three.js and WebGL. Deliver everything in a single standalone HTML file that opens directly in Chrome. Embed assets wherever possible.

VISUAL DIRECTION
Build a large, rounded island surrounded by an ocean with a transparent underwater cross-section. The result should feel like a premium miniature world: lush vegetation, expressive dinosaurs, rich materials, atmospheric lighting, and polished animation. Use a cohesive, stylized art direction rather than basic geometric shapes.
ISLAND
Create varied terrain with beaches, rocky cliffs, dense prehistoric forests, giant ferns, a waterfall, a freshwater pond, and a volcano. Add a small research station, wooden walkways, observation platforms, supply crates, and dinosaur nests. Make the island spacious enough for dinosaurs to move naturally between distinct areas.

WATER CROSS-SECTION
The water must form a deep, rounded volume around the island, with clearly visible underwater scenery through its sides. Include a textured seabed, rocks, aquatic plants, fish, bubbles, and a green marine reptile swimming beneath the surface. Do not place ordinary land dinosaurs underwater, and do not add a submarine.
Use animated waves, Fresnel reflections, underwater light patterns, shoreline foam, and splashes. Avoid transparency sorting artifacts and visible gaps between the island and water.

DINOSAURS
Include several distinct species, such as a long-necked sauropod, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, a large theropod, and smaller herd animals. Add pterosaurs circling overhead.
Give every species recognizable anatomy, shaped bodies, articulated limbs, detailed heads, tails, and appropriate skin patterns. Avoid assembling the finished dinosaurs from obvious boxes or disconnected spheres.

NATURAL ANIMATION
Use hierarchical skeletons with correctly positioned joints. Walking must have distinct stance and swing phases: feet stay planted during contact and lift cleanly during each step. Match stride length to movement speed.

Use terrain sampling and inverse kinematics to keep feet on the ground. Add weight shifts, subtle body movement, balanced tail motion, head turns, and breathing. Dinosaurs must never float, slide, intersect the ground, or walk through buildings, rocks, trees, or each other.
Use obstacle avoidance and safe paths. Different species should have different movement speeds, gait patterns, and behaviors. Marine animals must face their direction of travel.

INTERACTION
Allow users to:

Rotate the camera freely, zoom, and inspect the underwater cross-section.
Select a dinosaur and follow it with a smoothly moving camera.

Place food in suitable locations and watch nearby dinosaurs approach and eat.

Trigger drinking, resting, calling, and herd movement.

Explore nests and watch a hatchling emerge.
Trigger a marine reptile surfacing with a splash.
Switch between daylight, sunset, and night.
Adjust rain, wind, and volcanic activity.
Pause the simulation and reset the scene.
Make every control produce a clear, visible response. Keep interactions repeatable and prevent overlapping animations from breaking character poses.
ATMOSPHERE AND AUDIO
Add moving foliage, drifting clouds, birds, insects, rain particles, and warm research-station lights at night. Include quiet atmospheric music and environmental sounds with a working music toggle and volume slider. Start audio only after user interaction.
INTERFACE
Use a compact, elegant interface with English labels. Keep the scene dominant and avoid large panels covering the island. Make the layout responsive for desktop and mobile.
TECHNICAL QUALITY
Use instancing for repeated vegetation and props, efficient geometry, appropriate shadows, and restrained post-processing. Balance visual richness with smooth real-time performance.
Build a complete scene, not a mockup. Test the final HTML directly in a desktop browser, inspect screenshots and the console, exercise every interaction, and fix loading errors, floating dinosaurs, foot sliding, broken collisions, water artifacts, and camera problems before delivery.
```

## What it looks like

Written by Reference from the video frames, not by the creator.

Two islands side by side: Opus 5's volcanic island with lava streams on open sea, and Opus 5.5's Mammoth Island, an island on a round, see-through block of sea with icebergs and an underwater cross-section.

- Color: Left: turquoise sea, green island, a dark volcano with orange lava. Right: pale icy blue and white, teal water, and brown grass, with a dark sky and green aurora in some frames.
- Type: The creator's labels above each half, "Claude Opus 5" over "1.6$" and "Claude Opus 5.5" over "3.4$" in green pills, and the in-app titles "Smoldering Isle" and "Mammoth Island" with small control panels.
- Framing: Wide 8:3 split screen under a white header strip. Each half centers its island; the right half's sits on a round, glass-sided block of water.
- Structure: Both islands in daylight, the right one at night under aurora, a close view of the volcano with dinosaurs, a whale breaching beside the right island, a white-out of snow on the right, both at night with the volcano glowing, and both pulled back.

Storyboard, nine frames spread across the video: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/storyboard.webp

- Frame 1 at 1.1s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f1.webp
- Frame 2 at 3.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f2.webp
- Frame 3 at 5.5s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f3.webp
- Frame 4 at 7.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f4.webp
- Frame 5 at 9.9s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f5.webp
- Frame 6 at 12.1s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f6.webp
- Frame 7 at 14.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f7.webp
- Frame 8 at 16.5s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f8.webp
- Frame 9 at 18.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/prehistoric-island-ocean-cutaway/f9.webp

## How it was made, per the creator

- Reported spend: Opus 5: $1.6. Opus 5.5: $3.4.
- Notes: The same prompt on Claude Opus 5 (left) and Claude Opus 5.5 (right). The creator: "Opus 5 made a charming volcanic island, but 5.5’s scene feels much richer: cutaway water, underwater life, vegetation, mammoths, and northern lights." The live link, posted by the creator in the replies, is the Opus 5.5 version, titled Mammoth Island.

> Roughly twice the price. For this result, I’d pay the difference.
> (@vib3coded)

## Links

- Play game: https://claude.ai/artifact/1vGCqzE7aDVRnGuWdbnYm8
- Watch: https://x.com/vib3coded/status/2102450239923720440
- Original post: https://x.com/vib3coded/status/2102450239923720440
- Reply with the prompt: https://x.com/vib3coded/status/2102450842070569099