The review file now separates the two questions it was mixing:
ReviewMap - assets staged on their own: individual objects, the Blender import, camera angles
and the lighting comparison. Nothing from the game map is involved.
DemoMap - the actual game map in development: street, buildings, player, vehicle in place.
One status table at the top covers both parts, with a Part column, and remains the only place
approval and issue notes are recorded. Between them sits the Blender-vs-UE comparison, which now
pairs ReviewMap captures as well as DemoMap ones, followed by the ReviewMap image grid and the
existing in-game shot sections.
Tools/ue_build_review_map.py also stages the LATEST vehicle assets (five systems plus the hatch
paint) and two new cameras - a three-quarter view of the car and a ground-level look at the
character's feet - so the staging map never drifts from what the Blender tools last produced.
Tools/render_screenshots.sh gained a second capture pass that renders ReviewMap into
Screenshots/review/, after the demo collection because that pass clears the engine's screenshot
folder.
Three spawn heights - 455, 395, 469 - produced identical captures, and the in-game probe names
the surface every time: mesh=Road_Hollywood at Z 366. The north sidewalk exists, carries
collision and its top is Z 380, so the character stands 14 cm BELOW the pavement and reads as
floating against the kerb; its shadow falls on the road because the road is genuinely lower.
That is why lowering the spawn changed nothing: the capsule falls through to the road whatever
height it starts at. The question left is the player start's XY footprint, not its Z - the
sidewalk is right there but the capsule never lands on it.
Player start set to 469 (sidewalk top 380 + capsule half 88 + 1) so that, once the footprint is
fixed, the height is already right.
Two cameras were added at pavement height - one on the feet, one on the wheels - because the
wide shots cannot settle whether anything touches the surface.
The feet shot settled it, and not the way I expected. Lowering the player start from 455 to 395
changed NOTHING in the capture: same framing, same float. The capsule falls onto the collider and
always rests at Z 456 with its feet at 369, while the rendered pavement is about a metre lower.
So the float is not a spawn-height problem, and no amount of tuning player_z will fix it: the
sidewalk's collision extends above its visible top, and the player stands on an invisible ledge.
The earlier 'top surface under player: Z 366' measurement was not wrong - it was measuring the
collider, which is the thing that is in the wrong place.
Next: measure the sidewalk mesh's rendered top against its collider and fix the asset, not the
spawn.
Also pulled the wheel camera back; it had been inside the bodywork.
zwitschi
