03 · Surface Forge · our toolkit

Tools we built
because no one was
building them
for us.

Lit Fuse Studios is a community building its own tech. A pipeline that ships venue-ready content. A live-collab 360° world builder. A mobile companion that lets light cue voices into rooms. A research layer that keeps a piece tied to the place it belongs to. Open-sourced because if we needed it, others probably do too. This page is the tools — what ships today, what’s forthcoming, what’s on the research roadmap.

If you're curious but not technical — the live demos run in your browser. No install. The deeper docs are for when you're ready to build your own.

Free & openApache 2.0Works in a browserPhone · laptop · dome
See the toolkit Studio preview Public repo · pending release
Built for & by us AI artist · ComfyUI 3D artist · Blender Developer Educator / tinkerer VJ Curious
360° CAPTURE FLAT VIDEO AUDIO STEMS 3D / glTF PROVENANCE VENUE PRESET SOURCES Surface Forge apache 2.0 · python PIPELINE MPCDI v2 IMERSA FULLDOME ADM BW64 AMBIX / FUMA DIGISTAR · SKYSKAN WEBXR PREVIEW SHIP TO VENUE SURFACE FORGE · PIPELINE OVERVIEW
Our toolkit · what we ship, what we’re building

Four tools.
One practice.

We aren’t shipping a single product. We’re sharing the tools we’ve made for ourselves so far — and naming the ones still becoming. Two are live today. Two are forthcoming, on a research roadmap we’ll open as it stabilizes.

01 · LIVE TODAY

Surface Forge

The pipeline. Reads any source — 360° capture, flat video, audio, 3D — and surfaces it to whatever room it lands in. Phone, classroom screen, dome ceiling, immersive museum room, projection wall.

Open source · Apache 2.0 · Studio preview
02 · LIVE TODAY

360 Developers App

Build a 360° world together, in real time. Drop in voices, video, places, sound. Define how our community feels, looks, and speaks. Export straight to Surface Forge to see it in any venue.

Real-time collab · web-based
03 · FORTHCOMING

Chasing the Light

A mobile companion where light becomes the cue. Walk a room and a voice from one of our archives surfaces — geofenced to a single community when that’s the work, traveling with the piece when it isn’t. The room decides what surfaces. We’re building it for our 9.9.26 launch alongside Our Voices Unbound.

Forthcoming · mobile · 2026-09-09
04 · RESEARCH ROADMAP

Spectral Signature

The research layer underneath — our work on letting a piece know the room it belongs to without pre-built maps or dedicated hardware. Quiet on the how until it stabilizes. Loud on the why: a story shouldn’t lose its address every time it travels.

Research · opens as it stabilizes
02 · 360 Developers App

Build the room
together.

A web-based 360° world builder where multiple people shape the same space at the same time. Drop in voices, photos, video, sound, hotspots. Sketch on a phone in the field. Refine on a laptop. Export straight to Surface Forge to preview in a dome, a wall, or an immersive room.

360 Devs · loop
Studio preview · in development

A preview of the
Studio we’re building.

The 360 Developers App feeds a running Surface Forge preview. Click through a working version of the Studio — load a 360° source, pick a venue, watch the pipeline anchor, render, and ship. No install. The finished Lit Fuse Studio will be the friendlier, no-code layer on top of this same engine.

Preview · running
What you’re seeing

A working pipeline, one step before the Studio.

Same engine. Fewer rails. The finished Studio will hold your hand the whole way — this preview shows the machinery underneath so you can feel the shape of it.

Lit Fuse Studio
Coming soon · the friendlier, no-code layer on top of this engine.
Get on the early-access list
Install

Open the box.

Pip-installable. Pure Python core, optional ComfyUI nodes, optional Blender add-on. The library is the contract — what's in the live demo is what you get on disk.

# Surface Forge core (pending public release)
$ pip install surfaceforge

# Optional: ComfyUI node pack
$ pip install surfaceforge[comfy]

# Optional: Blender add-on
$ blender --command extension install surfaceforge

# Hello-world: ship a 360° capture to a planetarium
>>> from surfaceforge import ship_to_venue, load_preset
>>> preset = load_preset("planetarium_26m_4k")
>>> ship_to_venue("capture.mp4", preset, out="./build/")
[forge] analyzing capture.mp4 ... 360° equirect detected
[forge] anchoring to dome surface ... MPCDI v2 written
[forge] rendering IMERSA fulldome master ... 4K · 30fps
[forge] composing ambisonic FOA from spatial cues ...
[forge] writing ADM BW64 ... 6 sources, dome ring layout
[forge] writing Digistar script ... done
[forge] ship complete · 7 files in ./build/

github.com/litfuse-studios/surface-forge · public release pending

Deep dives · for technical readers

Open any door — the rest stays out of the way.

For developers · ComfyUI node pack
20+ nodes for AI media folks.
Drop into ComfyUI · route generated content into the pipeline

Already living in ComfyUI? Drop the node pack in. Route generated content through Surface Forge. Ship straight to a venue. No round-trip through other tools.

ShipToVenue
ShipTiered
PreviewFromSource
AnchorContent
AnalyzeContent
WriteMPCDI
LoadMPCDI
SurfaceRender
StreamRender
StreamDomeMaster
EncodeFOA
ComposeAmbisonic
WriteADMBW64
PanAudioToContent
DetectAnchor
ApplyVenuePreset
For developers · Python API
Twelve verbs. The surface area.
One-liners for the common path · full primitives for the deep cuts
CONTENT

analyze_for_surface()

Detect 360° vs flat, audio spatial cues, color space, anchor candidates. Returns a content fingerprint Surface Forge uses everywhere downstream.

read · classify · fingerprint
CONTENT

detect_anchor()

Find the surface the content should anchor to — horizon line, focal subject, anchor object. Used by SurfaceRender to keep things from drifting on a curved surface.

vision · cv2 · numpy
VENUE

load_preset()

Grab one of 20+ built-in venue presets — dome_720, urban_block_large, civic_convening_space_composite, planetarium_26m_4k, nightclub_standard, and more.

presets · venue-aware affordances
SHIP

ship_to_venue()

The headline call. Source + preset → full venue-ready package. Calls analyze, anchor, render, audio compose, write the venue scripts. One line for the common path.

orchestrator · one-liner
SHIP

ship_tiered()

Three-tier delivery — preview, mid, full. For pipelines where the venue wants a low-latency preview while the full IMERSA master renders in the background.

tiered · async
PREVIEW

preview_from_source()

Render a WebXR-ready HTML preview. What the live demo runs on. Drop into a browser; works on a Chromebook or a Quest.

WebXR · three.js · single file
AUDIO

encode_foa_source()

Convert per-source positional audio into First-Order Ambisonic (AmbiX or FuMa). Generic playback for any speaker rig.

FOA · AmbiX · FuMa
AUDIO

compose_ambisonic_from_panels()

Build a full ambisonic mix from panel-positioned sources. The way Surface Forge derives a venue-agnostic master from the content's spatial layout.

spatial composition
AUDIO

write_adm_bw64()

Write the production-grade object-based audio file. Atmos-grade pipeline, compatible with any venue engine that reads ADM BW64.

ADM BW64 · object-based
AUDIO

pan_audio_to_content_position()

Tie an audio source to the on-content position of its visual subject. The audio follows the speaker on the dome ceiling, automatically.

audio · content-locked
CALIB

write_mpcdi()

Generate VESA MPCDI v2 calibration files. Per-projector geometry + color, anchor markers, edge-blend curves. Standard format any pro AV team can ingest.

MPCDI v2 · per-projector
EXPORT

write_blender_rig()

Drop the venue + content into a Blender scene. Camera rig, projection geometry, audio source positions. For the 3D pipeline already living in Blender.

Blender · glTF · USD
Deep dive · formats written
Every format a venue actually wants.
Dome masters · MPCDI tiles · glTF scenes · Digistar / SkySkan scripts · provenance
VIDEO · DOME

IMERSA fulldome master

4K / 8K fisheye renders, dome-ring lighting cues, audience seating mask. The format planetariums actually book.

VIDEO · MULTI

MPCDI v2 tiles

VESA-standard per-projector tiles with edge-blend, geometry warp, and color calibration. Reads in any pro AV pipeline.

3D · SCENE

glTF + Blender rig

Venue scene + content layout as an editable 3D file. Drops into any 3D toolchain. Includes camera, projection geometry, audio sources.

PREVIEW

WebXR HTML

Single-file preview that runs in any browser or headset. What the Studio preview serves. Survives a school Chromebook.

SCRIPT · DIGISTAR

Digistar show script

Native script for Evans & Sutherland Digistar planetariums.

SCRIPT · SKYSKAN

SkySkan DigitalSky

SkySkan production format. Spitz / Zeiss equivalents in the same family.

PROVENANCE

Consent + citation manifest

Every voice, every recording, every contributor — Creator, ConsentRecord, RecordingContext, Citation, ToolingRecord, governance_review fields. Auditable.

Deep dive · spatial sound
Audio that knows where it is.
Object-based · ambisonic · per-speaker-per-venue · HRTF preview-only

Production is object-based and per-speaker, per-venue. HRTF binaural is a preview-only output — useful on headphones, but never a substitute for real spatial delivery. Grammy-grade engineers will find the formats they already work in.

OBJECT · PRODUCTION

ADM BW64

Object-based production audio. The standard from ITU-R BS.2076. Atmos-grade. Drives any venue’s speaker rig.

ROOM · MASTER

Ambisonic AmbiX / FuMa

First-order ambisonic master for generic playback. The room-master tier between preview and full object-based.

VENUE · PER-SPEAKER

Per-speaker, per-venue renders

Compile the object-based master down to each venue’s specific speaker rig. One source of truth; many rigs.

PREVIEW ONLY

HRTF binaural

Useful when you’re on headphones. Never used as a substitute for real object-based delivery.

CALIBRATION

Room-aware mix

Account for the speakers, geometry, and acoustic profile of the venue before the mix ships. The toolkit takes the venue preset and bakes the appropriate mix.

CONTENT-LOCKED

Audio follows the voice

A speaker on the dome ceiling stays tied to their on-content position automatically — the audio moves with the story.

Coming soon · user-friendly studio

The toolkit is open.
The studio is being built.

A friendlier, no-code way to use Surface Forge — for artists, educators, and community members who want to make their own immersive piece without touching the tools underneath. In development. Tell us if you want in early and we’ll keep you posted.

The toolkit underneath is free. Always. The studio is what we’re building on top.