Two findings, one a bug and one the real cause.
Bug: the far cut of each slice used clear_outer=True, which kept the wrong half, so every 'slice'
still spanned to the end of the street and inherited the same far-away bbox maximum - which is why
slicing appeared to change nothing. Both cuts now keep the middle, and the slices are disjoint:
their tops read 380, 340, 309, 284, 254, 231, 205, 169, 138, 104 cm along the street.
Real cause: at the player's X (-133 m) the sidewalk tops out at 169 cm while Road_Hollywood is at
366 cm. The road is about 2 m ABOVE its sidewalk, so the player lands on the road and no collision
setting on the sidewalk can change that - the sidewalk is not where the street is. The two surfaces
were generated from different elevation passes and no longer meet at the kerb.
That is site-pipeline data, not placement. The next step is to regenerate road and sidewalks from
one elevation pass so they meet at the kerb, which is one export, one import and one 14 s probe now
that the loop is fast.
The site exporter now splits sidewalks and kerbs into ~20 m pieces
(SEGMENTED / SEGMENT_M in Art/blender/site/export_site_fbx.py), 56 slices in all, so each has a
bounding box that means something where it stands instead of reporting the highest point on a
279 m slope. They import and stage (63 site meshes in the demo map).
The hypothesis behind it is dead, and that is the useful part: with the invisible sidewalk
stopgap retired, the player now falls to Road_Hollywood at 366 - the slices do not block either.
So the 279 m aspect ratio was never the cause; a 20 m slice of the same mesh fails identically.
The sidewalk geometry itself is what does not collide, and the next place to look is its shape -
an open surface with no volume, inverted winding or zero-thickness triangles - not the import
flags and not the size.
The stopgap retirement stands: the player walks on the road, which is real geometry that does
collide, rather than on an invisible ledge.
The reported fall-through was a misdiagnosis: the player never fell. The
imported Terrain_DEM had only a bounding-box simple collision proxy, so a
downward trace anywhere in the block hit the terrain at Z 819 (the mesh
bbox max) and the street sat under an invisible 8 m lid. Standing on that
box looked plausible, which is why it read as working.
- add UGigLineAssetTools (C++): force CTF_UseComplexAsSimple on a static
mesh. UE 5.8 dropped bUseComplexAsSimpleCollision and Python cannot set
the flag; the builder also saves the asset, since the flag lives there
and a map-only save silently reverts it.
- spawn (-13336, -1150, 600): inside the carved corridor (the cut is a
10.7 m half-width around the road centreline), lands on the road at 456.
- fix ResetToStart returning to the mid-air PlayerStart captured in
BeginPlay: StartLocation is now captured on the first grounded frame.
- HighResShot 1280x720 instead of "1280 720", which is a multiplier.
- add -qaselftest: scripted walk/reset/pause on a core ticker plus a
swept ground transect. Results: walk 746 cm/2 s with Z steady, reset
0 cm from spawn, pause/unpause 1/0, transect 84 samples 0 holes.
- rebase onto main, keeping the frontage materials and placement fixes.
Completes "Fixed daytime lighting and basic ambience" for 0.1.0. All 14
screenshots approved by the owner.
Lighting rig (Tools/ue_build_demo_map.py):
- Sun pitch -50 / yaw 120, intensity 4, warm (255/245/230), atmosphere sun light
- Sky light 2.6 with real-time capture, sky atmosphere, height fog (density 0.008)
- Unbound post-process volume with fixed exposure (min == max brightness) so a
shot cannot wash out or crush to black depending on how much sky it frames
- Dynamic-only: r.AllowStaticLighting=False plus MOVABLE lights and mesh
components, so the editor's "LIGHTING NEEDS TO BE REBUILT" warning no longer
fires and nothing needs baking
Bugs found and fixed on the way:
- Blender diffuse colours do not survive the FBX -> Unreal import: every site
material arrived white and the terrain arrived with WorldGridMaterial, which
is what actually made the scene look blown out. The demo builder now creates
and assigns M_Asphalt, M_Concrete, M_Ground and M_RoadPaint.
- Only one of the three crossings reached the game: each zebra band was its own
object, so Blender renamed the duplicates .001/.002 and exact-name site
assembly skipped them. All bands are now one Crossing_Markings mesh.
- Demo cameras: street-level sat inside the facade body (rendering its unlit
back face) and the crossing camera aimed at the s=36.6 crossing instead of
the designated s=130.1 (UE X -14956).
- The terrain had no material and imported as a bright default grid.
- Cleared a committed Android File Server SecurityToken (plugin disabled and
shipping-excluded; the value must stay empty).
Docs:
- Screenshots/README.md: one consolidated table for all 14 shots with map,
camera view and description; all approved.
- MEMORY.md: records the material-import, exposure, light_color struct,
band-naming, camera-bounds and lighting-build traps.
- TODO.md: lighting item marked done.
Squash of branch gameplay-lighting-0.1.0 (PR #3).
- street_mesh.py: continental zebra markings (0.5 m bars, 0.5 m gaps, 3 m
band) at all three signalised crossings, triangles not quads (FBX SDK
refuses to triangulate the crown-twisted quads), stripes +6 cm above the
DEM so they stay above the road surface; winding flipped so every street
surface faces up (road/sidewalks/markings were 100% down-facing and
invisible in engine once the terrain stopped covering them).
- terrain_from_dem.py: cut a 10.7 m corridor around the Hollywood Blvd
centreline so road, kerbs and sidewalks are not buried under the terrain;
sidewalks themselves cover the transition band, walk-check stays at 0 holes.
- Blender builders save with a writability guard + fatal failure: *.blend
is LFS-lockable and checks out read-only; a failed save previously left
downstream steps building from stale files.
- ue_import_site.py: Crossing_Markings imports with no collision (paint on
the road); ue_build_demo_map.py stages it and chmods the lockable .umap
before saving (save_map silently returned False on read-only maps).
- ue_build_review_map.py: demo-crossing camera moved to the real crossing
(s=130.1 m -> UE -24291,-1340) and fixed the ensure_writable path (was
missing the .umap suffix, so the chmod never fired).
zwitschi