release: v0.2.2 — the character pass

Writes the 0.2.2 entry and prunes the section from TODO.md. The entry records that this
ships as a patch by the owner's decision even though it adds asset categories, which the
policy otherwise puts in a minor release - so the numbering is not mistaken for scope.

Contents: clothing as three separate skinned meshes, hair cards oriented from the scalp
normal, ComfyUI character blueprints and the render-vs-blueprint comparison, procedural
textures, materials built from scratch, the raised sun, and the walk cycle starting at
maximum stride.

Verified: 8/8 shots, all approved; mean deltaE 31.9 -> 21.8 against the blueprint; 95
tool tests. Known limitations listed rather than omitted - garments are shells over body
faces, the baked diffuse cannot be used because the mesh UVs do not map to it, and the
character has no face detail.

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -8,6 +8,47 @@ Format: [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/) style, versions follow [
 
 Nothing yet.
 
+## [0.2.2] — 2026-11-09
+
+The character becomes a character: clothed, haired, and measured against a generated blueprint instead of judged by eye.
+
+**Version note:** this ships as a patch by the owner's decision even though it adds asset categories, which the release policy otherwise puts in a minor release. Recorded here so the numbering is not mistaken for scope later.
+
+### Added
+
+- **Clothing** — navy tee, dark jeans and off-white shoes as three separate skinned meshes (`Tools/character_clothing_build.py`), built from the body's own faces per the `character-artist` workflow: duplicate faces, solidify for cloth thickness, one mesh per piece. Each imports with its own single material slot and is attached as a leader-pose component.
+- **Hair cards** (`Tools/character_hair_build.py`) — a scalp cap plus 26 cards in three overlapping rows, quads only, every vertex weighted to `head`. Cards are oriented from the scalp normal at their anchor, so the cut follows the skull instead of standing out as spikes.
+- **Character blueprints** (`Tools/comfyui_character_blueprint.py`) — front, side, back and head views generated by the local ComfyUI instance from one description, with fixed seeds and a JSON record of prompts and prompt ids.
+- **Blueprint comparison** (`Tools/character_match.py`) — figure aspect, fill and coverage deltas, mean CIE76 and dominant-palette distance, plus a side-by-side montage. The deltas stay separate on purpose: one similarity number between a photoreal sheet and a low-detail body would mean nothing.
+- **ComfyUI driver** (`Tools/comfyui_generate.py`) and **procedural textures** (`Tools/generate_character_textures.py`), each writing a provenance sidecar.
+- **Material builder** (`Tools/ue_character_materials.py`) — `M_Character_Skin` and `M_Character_Hair_Mat` built from scratch, because `unreal.MaterialEditingLibrary` segfaults in a headless commandlet when it rebuilds an existing graph.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **The sun was raised** from pitch -62 to -74. The character stood in building shadow lit almost entirely by the blue sky light, so warm skin sampled as blue-grey — face (99, 98, 100) before, (131, 121, 117) after at the same camera.
+- **The walk cycle starts at maximum stride**, so the deterministic stride capture lands on the stride rather than on one of the two frames where the legs pass together.
+- Cloth shells are fattened 8 mm along their own normals after solidify; 1 cm of solidify let the body through at shoulders, hips and knees.
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **Hair read blond and thin** because the strand sheet's pale RGB drove base colour; the sheet now supplies only the opacity mask, and the colour is a dark constant.
+- **Garment coverage holes** at shoulders, hips and knees, closed by 2 cm solidify plus the normal fatten.
+- **A crash of my own making:** binding materials in `Tick` with `ConstructorHelpers::FObjectFinder` is fatal outside a constructor. Moved to `BeginPlay` with `LoadObject`.
+- **Shots 6, 7 and 8 were documented as an unclothed body** after the appearance changed; the README now matches the render and all eight shots are approved.
+
+### Verified
+
+- 8 review shots verify; **all eight approved** by the owner 2026-11-09.
+- Blueprint comparison improved from mean ΔE **31.9 → 21.8** and palette ΔE **25.4 → 19.7** once the character was clothed.
+- 95 tool tests pass (13 new for the colour maths, masks and palettes).
+
+### Known limitations
+
+- **The garments are still shells over body faces**, not simulated cloth: no wrinkles, no drape, and no separation from the body in motion.
+- **`T_Character_Diffuse` cannot be used.** Sampling it renders the body black, so the MPFB mesh's UVs do not map onto that bake; skin is a constant tone and the generated pore sheet is unwired.
+- **The character has no face detail** — the eyes, mouth and brows are mesh and lighting only, and read as a mannequin at close range.
+- **Camera collision remains implemented but unexercised.**
+
 ## [0.2.1] — 2026-11-09
 
 Rig fixes. Two defects from the `0.2.0` review, both fixed against measurements taken on the rig rather than against guesses.