Banner lettering (JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE): new Tools/gen/generate_banner_texture.py
draws the exact title with Pillow + Liberation Sans Bold - an image model would
mangle a trademark string, and Qwen-Image 2.1 is research-only. Gold JIMMY /
KIMMEL / LIVE stacked on a crimson ground. ue_hero_facade_import.py generalises
import_albedo to import_texture and wires the banner into M_Facade_Banner_Ref as
Base Color (tiling 1.0), replacing the flat dark tint with a brighter red per the
owner's 'less dark, more bright'.
Re-rendered all three ReviewMap staging shots (front, oblique, portals) and
updated their Screenshots/README.md status rows.
The hero facade rework is now closed at 'surface detail that reads at 45 m'. The
remaining elevation work - volute capital depth, lattice grille depth, and the
full realism pass - is deferred to 0.9.0 per the owner, and the 0.9.0 hero item
records the hand-off.
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.
Used the workflow integration from the previous step for real: generated a warm limestone ashlar albedo
with two profiles compared (AlbedoBase 17.04 vs Krea-2 13.90, AlbedoBase won), saved it as
Art/textures/generated/T_FacadeAshlar_AI.png beside its provenance sidecar, and imported it to
/Game/Hollywood/Textures.
ue_hero_facade_import.py now imports that albedo and, for the two stone slots, builds a material with
TextureSampleParameter2D -> Multiply(tint) -> Base Color, tiling the UVs 6x, so the map carries the coursing
and the tint keeps the value inside the reference's range.
Two real bugs fixed on the way:
- the albedo path was resolved against unreal.Paths.project_dir() (Game/GigLine), not the repository root, so
the import silently skipped;
- the authored materials were never saved - only the mesh was - so after a reload the slots pointed at
nothing and the elevation fell back to one default colour.
Honest status: the nodes are verified present and saved (Constant3Vector, TextureSampleParameter2D,
TextureCoordinate, Multiply) and the source mesh has UVs, but the render still shows the flat tint. Recorded
in TODO.md with the next probe: read the compiled Base Color pin instead of the node list.
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md gains the AlbedoBase row (commercial use, credit required).
Tools/comfyui_generate.py drives the local ComfyUI instance for generated textures
and writes a sidecar with model, prompt, seed and workflow, so a generated asset can
be regenerated or rejected instead of being an unexplained PNG. Models list and
generation both verified against 127.0.0.1:8188.
Stable Diffusion is not usable for flat skin swatches, and that is worth recording:
three attempts produced an anatomical close-up twice and a leather-scale surface once.
Skin detail is generated procedurally instead - tileable octave noise for pores, plus
a strand sheet for hair - in Tools/generate_character_textures.py, with sidecars.
Hair geometry exists (cap conforming to the head, weighted to the head bone, second
material slot in Blender) but Unreal's import collapses the second material slot, so
the cap renders with the skin material and reads as a bald skull. It is behind
--hair and off; the next step is a separate skeletal mesh attached as a second
component.
zwitschi