The owner rejected the previous pass on three counts - too saturated, too dark, and the albedo was wrong for the
building. All three were true, and the reason the colour work kept missing is that the albedo never reached the
material: import_albedo() resolved the repository root one level short after the tools move, so every 'stone'
render was the flat tint alone. That is fixed first.
Then measured instead of guessed: the reference's sunlit stone samples sRGB ~0.49 (linear ~0.19), attic
highlight ~0.75, shaded recess ~0.43, and it is nearly neutral, not warm. New albedo generated for a pale
low-contrast marble-limestone ashlar (two checkpoints compared, AlbedoBase won) and the tint moved to
(0.47, 0.455, 0.43) with the shadow at (0.30, 0.29, 0.27), which lands lit stone around 0.62 sRGB - brighter
than the last pass and close to the photographs.
The elevation now reads as pale, low-saturation concrete/marble with thin-jointed ashlar. Row 4-6 re-rendered
and pending. The architectural pass the owner also asked for - carved inscription, medallions, banner lettering,
capital and grille depth - is untouched and recorded as the next step.
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES carries the new seed and prompt.
The generated ashlar albedo never showed for two reasons that had nothing to do with the material graph,
which was verified correct the whole time (TextureSampleParameter2D -> Multiply -> Base Color, colour sampler,
texture set, 6x UV tiling):
1. **The map overrode every hero slot.** The generic per-slot material pass in ue_build_demo_map.py assigned
the facade KIT's flat stone to every actor whose slot names looked like stone, banner, glass - including
Hero_Facade. Whatever the import authored was replaced at map build time. The hero is now excluded and gets
its own materials.
2. **Mesh slot assignment does not persist.** Assigning to mesh.get_editor_property('static_materials') returns a
copy; after a reload the mesh still pointed at the original imported materials (measured twice). Component
level overrides do persist in the saved map, so apply_hero_materials() sets them in both builders.
The elevation now renders as coursed, grainy warm limestone with banners, window bays and recessed portals.
Rows 4-6 re-rendered and pending review; the comparison plate is regenerated. Still missing against the
reference: carved inscription, medallion relief, banner lettering, crimson banner tone. The two-model judge
returns no/no (0.90/0.95) - it wants the text and detail that are still absent, which is at least the right
complaint this time.
Iterated the loop five times against Art/reference/hero-masonic/. What took the iterations was the material,
not the geometry:
- M_FacadeStone in /Game/Hollywood/Site is the KIT stone; the hero does not use it, so warming it changed
nothing.
- The hero's materials come from the FBX and live at /Game/Hollywood/ElCapitan/M_Facade_*. Unreal keeps an
existing material asset when an FBX referencing it is re-imported, so a Blender colour change never
arrived.
- Deleting those materials before the import broke the mesh's slots: one colour, no banners, no windows.
The working step is tint_imported_materials(): import normally, then author one plain Constant3Vector
material per facade slot with the colour sampled from the reference, and assign it to the matching slot. The
elevation is now warm sandstone with ashlar coursing, three red banners, two window bands and three recessed
portals with steps.
Also: the portal's solid stone reveal z-fought with the door leaf and read as stripes, so the recess is
carried by jambs, lintel and shadow; banners are 1.35 x 6.2 m hung from 7.2 m instead of 1.55 x 5.4.
Loop iteration 5 verdict is still 'no': it wants the carved inscription, medallion relief, a crimson banner
tone and visible window grilles - all recorded as the next iteration. Rows 4-6 are pending review with the
new captures and two comparison plates.
Tools/hero_iterate.sh runs the whole chain - chmod the Blender files, build, import, render, judge, plate -
and fails loudly at each step with its log under /tmp/gigline. Tools/hero_compare.py builds the side-by-side
plate (reference | rendered, one height, labelled); two are committed for review.
This pass: the stone is warmer in Blender (0.66/0.60/0.48 against the near-white blockout) and the banners are
1.35 x 6.2 m hung from 7.2 m, matching the reference proportion instead of the 1.55 x 5.4 that sat too low and
too fat.
Iteration 1 judge verdict, confidence 0.9: lacks warm sandstone, lacks fluted column detail, banners wrong,
no doorways, no inscription or medallions. Checked against the plate, two of those are wrong (120 flute
strips exist and cast shadows; three 1.2 m deep doorways with steps exist and read black) and three are real.
The split is recorded in TODO.md with the next action for each - the important one being that the stone colour
must change in the UE material (ue_hero_facade_import.py), not in the Blender material, which the render does
not use.
zwitschi
