WAM — WoW-ish Art Model language

A text language + compiler for LLM-authored low-poly characters: mesh, skeleton, and animations from many lines of readable source, compiled to glTF 2.0 with software-rendered turntables for visual iteration.

Try it

Paste this into your favorite LLM:

Clone https://github.com/elliottdehn/wam and make me [what you want to model] that I can see

It will read the spec, author the model, compile it, look at the renders it produced, and iterate until the thing holds together — then hand you a glTF and a turntable sheet. "that I can see" is the part that matters: it puts the model in the loop of looking at its own output.

The founding rule: the author only makes discrete, named, relative, symmetric decisions — bone angles as words+degrees, body masses as cross-section rings, membranes as fans of ribs, symmetry via mirror blocks, props in local-frame groups. The compiler generates every vertex, skin weight, normal, and winding, and a semantic linter rejects the classes of silent geometry bugs that renders hide (folds, wrong-bone bindings, floating feet, inside-out faces, parts buried inside other parts) — plus whatever proportions you write down yourself in a checks section.

Models aren't limited to characters: scripts/compose_town.py composes a set of prop models into a single scene with a packed mega-atlas, and wam.zone compiles whole environments from landforms and placement rules.

A textures section gives materials a hand-painted look from named procedural operators (gradients, noise, grain, bricks, planks, AO...), baked into an auto-unwrapped texel atlas that ships inside the glTF.

Quick start

python3 -m wam.cli mymodel.wam                  # compile + render 4-view sheet
python3 -m wam.cli mymodel.wam --anim walk --frames 6
python3 -m wam.cli mymodel.wam --bones          # skeleton overlay
python3 -m wam.cli mymodel.wam --width 760 --height 560   # landscape panels

Outputs land in out/: a skinned, animated .gltf (drops into Blender/three.js/engines), PNG render sheets, the texture atlas, and a *_viewer.json — open viewer/template.html in a browser and drop the JSON onto it for an interactive orbit/animation view. Requires Python 3 + numpy.

The repository ships no example models — SPEC.md is the reference, and every construct in it has a worked snippet. A taste of the language:

skeleton
  root pelvis at 0.52
  bone spine1 parent=pelvis dir=up pitch=13 len=0.13
  mirror
    bone thigh parent=pelvis side=0.07 dir=down pitch=-8 len=0.22
  end

parts
  loft torso bones=pelvis..spine2 material=skin
    ring 0.00 w=0.25 d=0.185 material=cloth
    ring 0.80 w=0.315 d=0.225
    cap start=dome end=dome

  group axe bone=hand.r at=1.0 dir=up pitch=45 yaw=-15
    loft haft at=(0,-0.03,0) dir=up len=0.47 material=leather
      ...
  end

animations
  anim walk loop dur=1.15
    ch thigh.l pitch 0%=-22 50%=19 100%=-22
    mirrorphase 50%

Claude Code plugin

This repo is a Claude Code plugin: it ships a wam skill that teaches Claude the language, the compile-render-iterate workflow, and the hard-won authoring rules (gait timing, prop groups, cloth skinning, fold avoidance).

/plugin marketplace add elliottdehn/wam
/plugin install wam@wam

Then ask Claude for a model ("make a WoW-style troll") and it will author, compile, and visually iterate using the bundled toolchain.

Layout

• wam/ — compiler: parser → skeleton solver → mesh generation → texture baker → lint → glTF export, plus a dependency-free software rasterizer.
• wam/checks.py — the checks section: proportion, clearance, clipping, rig-quality and animation assertions re-run on every compile.
• wam/modelset.py — .wamset files: cross-model checks in meters, so a whole cast stays to one scale.
• SPEC.md — the language specification.
• scripts/crop.py — cuts matching regions out of a reference image and a render and pairs them at the same scale, for comparisons that are not just silhouette-deep.
• viewer/ — template for a self-contained WebGL viewer page (wam/viewer_export.py produces the data blob to inject).
• skills/wam/ — the Claude Code skill.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

No idea what to make?

python3 dice.py        # a brine-crusted heron with a crown of horns too heavy for its neck
python3 dice.py -n 5   # five, and pick one

Publishing

A finished model can be given a link at wamshare — private and unlisted, or public under CC0 1.0. Agents: read PUBLISHING_MUST_READ.md. You must offer both, with their licences named, and you must never publish unasked.