Canal Town and Windmill

Walk a canal through a small brick town: gable terraces to the water, a working quay with a crane and a moored barge, a drawbridge, lock gates and a humpback bridge, and a tower mill turning its sails at the west end.

About

What is placed

An unnamed canal town, 56 m of water end to end. The cut runs the length of the plot as water plane modules set into the ground rather than a hole in it, quay edged on both banks, with a stepped landing down to the water on each side. A drawbridge stands at the west end, lock gates hold the middle and a humpback bridge arches over the east end. A barge lies alongside the working quay under the crane post, with a rowing boat, a punt and fender piles at other moorings.

The north bank is built up to the water: eleven stepped and bell gable fronts in three widths, a corner block at the end, party walled into one terrace under pantile roofs with ridge caps, dormers and chimney stacks, each with a doorstep and railing and window boxes on the sill. The south bank is the working side: a warehouse front with its hoist beam, a bay shopfront and three more houses, and beyond them the open market quay with awninged stalls, cheese boards, a churn, barrels, packing crates, bulb crates and tulip troughs, worked by handcarts, a delivery bicycle and a wheelbarrow. Street lamps, benches, hitching posts, blank signposts, water pumps, duckboards and clothes lines dress both banks.

The tower mill stands at the west end of the working bank: lower and upper drum stages, the stage gallery, the cap and tail pole, the sail cross and the hoist beam over the entry door. The tower itself is sealed, so the mill's own gear stands out in the yard under the stage where you can walk round it: the millstones and tun in their case, the grain hopper and chute, sacks, the flour cart and a spare sail frame. That yard is the only place a visitor meets the machinery, and it is worth the detour.

311 placements of 56 models, about 6.6 MB of GLB in all.

What moves

The sail cross spins on the cap, and the cap and tail pole turn to bring the sails round to the wind. The drawbridge beam lifts its deck and the lock gates swing open. Every house front opens its door and its shutters, the dormer casements open, the warehouse shutter doors and its hoist run, and the shopfront opens. The mill's entry door opens, its hoist hook lifts, and the millstones turn in the tun. The crane post slews its jib and the barge steers. Wheels roll on the flour cart, both handcarts, both bicycles and the wheelbarrows, the water pump handles rock and the churn paddle turns. Twenty three of the placed models carry clips, and all of them stand beside the walk.

What does not move, and why

Sailcloth, mooring ropes, the washing on the lines, the water and the chimney smoke are static geometry. Each of them is flexible material, which needs a joint per element to deform, and the rigid node transform this library animates with cannot give that; a faked version would cost a consumer more than it gives. There are no people and no animals: the pack has no skinned meshes. This is a made up town, and every signboard, gable stone, shop sign and name board on it is deliberately blank, so a consumer can letter them for their own world.

Every piece here is a published model from the pack, placed by hand. Walk with the keys or touch, and approach a piece to see it move if it has animation. Colliders, navigation and gameplay are yours to add.

Points of interest

The mill gear, out in the yard
The tower is sealed, so its working parts stand out here where you can walk round them: the millstones and tun turning in their case, the grain hopper and chute, the sacks and the flour cart.
Mill Millstones And Tun (Canal Town and Windmill)
Sail cross and cap
Four sails turn on the cross, and the cap and tail pole rotate to bring them round to the wind. The hoist beam over the door lifts sacks to the stage.
Mill Sail Cross (Canal Town and Windmill)
The drawbridge
A counterweighted beam lifts the deck clear so a mast can pass. Stand under it as it swings.
Canal Drawbridge (Canal Town and Windmill)
The lock gates
A mitred pair swings open across the cut at the east end of the town, past the humpback bridge. The canal itself is water plane modules laid into the paving, so it keeps a flat surface at any length.
Canal Lock Gate Pair (Canal Town and Windmill)
The working quay
The crane post slews its jib over the barge moored alongside. Fender piles take the hull, and packing crates and barrels wait on the setts behind.
Canal Quay Crane (Canal Town and Windmill)
The gable terrace
Stepped and bell gables in three widths, party walled into one run, with pantile roofs, dormers and chimney stacks. Every door and shutter opens.
Canal House Front Bell Gable (Canal Town and Windmill)
Market on the wide quay
Awninged stalls with cheese boards, a butter churn, barrels, bulb crates and tulip troughs, worked by a handcart and a delivery bicycle.
Market Stall With Awning (Canal Town and Windmill)
The humpback bridge
A stone arch carries the street over the cut at the east end. From the crown you can see the whole run of water, the terrace and the mill at the far end.
Canal Humpback Bridge (Canal Town and Windmill)

Use with an AI agent

Copy this prompt into your AI chat to rebuild the layout, then describe what to change.

Rebuild the "Canal Town and Windmill" demo scene from the Canal Town and Windmill pack in my project.

Layout (JSON, every placement with its CDN URL): https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/demos/canal-town-and-windmill
Pack manifest: https://3dassets.dev/api/v1/packs/canal-town-and-windmill
Demo page: https://3dassets.dev/demos/canal-town-and-windmill

- 343 placements of 56 models; units are metres, +Y up, rotation is yaw in degrees about +Y
- Spawn at (15.4, 0, -5.4) facing -92 degrees; eye height 1.6 m
- Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal (no attribution required)
- Loading: three.js GLTFLoader, one load per distinct model, cloned per placement; no decoders required

Also available as JSON or Markdown, and via the MCP server.

Common questions

How do I use Canal Town and Windmill with my AI development tools?

Press "Copy for AI agent" above and paste the prompt into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT or any other coding assistant. The prompt carries the direct CDN URL, the real-world size, the licence and the loading notes, so the assistant can fetch the scene and place it in your project without you writing the loader yourself. For a permanent connection, add the 3DAssets.dev MCP server to your tool with one command (for Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http 3dassets https://3dassets.dev/mcp) and the assistant can then search the whole catalogue, fetch files and read the usage snippets on its own.

MCP server setup Guide for AI agents

How do I get started?

Walk the scene here with the keys or touch to see how the pack fits together. To build it yourself, download the pack with the button, then copy the "Copy for AI agent" prompt: it links the layout JSON, which lists every placement with its position, rotation and CDN URL, so an assistant connected to the MCP server can rebuild the scene in your engine and change it to order.

MCP server setup

Which game engines and tools can I use Canal Town and Windmill with?

Anything that reads glTF, which today means all of the major ones: three.js and React Three Fiber on the web, Godot 4, Unity, Unreal Engine 5, Blender and the model-viewer web component. Every model in the scene is a self-contained binary glTF (.glb) with textures embedded, so each is one file to import and no plugin, converter or decoder to install first.

How do I import this scene into Unity, Godot, Unreal or Blender?

Unity: install the glTFast package (com.unity.cloud.gltfast) from the Package Manager, drop the .glb into Assets and drag the prefab in, or load it at runtime from the CDN URL. Godot 4: copy the file into the project folder and the editor imports it as a scene you can instantiate. Unreal Engine 5: File > Import with the built-in glTF importer, which converts the axes for you. Blender: File > Import > glTF 2.0. Units are metres with +Y up in the file, and every importer above handles the conversion to its own axes automatically.

Can I use Canal Town and Windmill in a commercial game, and do I need to credit anyone?

Yes to commercial use and no to credit. Every scene on 3DAssets.dev is released under CC0 1.0 Universal, which places it in the public domain: use it in a paid game, an app, a film or a client project, modify it, redistribute it, and put nothing in the credits. A link back is welcome but it is entirely your choice.

CC0 licence text

Can I load it from the CDN instead of downloading it?

Yes. The pack behind it has a permanent URL on cdn.3dassets.dev that is CORS-enabled and never changes content, so you can pass it straight to GLTFLoader, glTFast or model-viewer in production and cache it as hard as you like. Downloading is only needed for engines that import from disk.

Is the demo itself a file I can download?

No, and it does not need to be. A demo is a layout of the pack's published models composed in your browser from the CDN, so there is no extra file to fetch. Download the pack for the models, and take the layout JSON linked above for the placements: together they are the whole scene, and an AI agent can rebuild it from those two links.

Can I change the scene, or add gameplay to it?

Yes. The layout is plain data in metres, so move, add or remove placements freely in your own engine. Colliders, navigation and gameplay are yours to add: the demo shows what the pack looks like assembled, and your game decides how it plays.

Models in this demo

Canal Water Module (Canal Town and Windmill)

Free 3D model of a canal water tile for a historical canal town game asset kit: 4 m square dark green surface with low swells, ports on all four edges.

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