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.
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.
The e2e asset check now completes: PASS on all six steps - empty maps 9 s, demo build 10 s, review build 9 s,
captures 80 s, judge 388 s, review file. Four breakages from the folder move had to be fixed first:
- ue_placement and ue_common are siblings of the scripts that import them, but the rewrite put only the tools
root on sys.path, so every Unreal commandlet died with ModuleNotFoundError. Both paths are inserted now.
- render_screenshots.sh resolved the repository root one level up, so commandlet paths became Tools/Tools/...
and the capture step failed in 0 s.
- the driver treated a result file left by an earlier run as success, which is how a ten-second 'demo build'
passed without building. Result files are unlinked before each step and child output streams to a per-step
log file rather than a pipe.
- two editors on one project hang instead of failing, so the driver refuses to start while one is running.
Also corrects ue_recreate_maps.py: LevelEditorSubsystem.new_level() refuses a path whose package is still in
memory and delete_asset() leaves the file on disk, measured create->delete->create returning False. The step
now loads each map, destroys every actor, saves, and reports the count it left (0), which is the property the
builders actually need.
Open question recorded in TODO.md: the rebuilt map holds 409 actors and 613 KB against 600 and 886 KB before,
and the ~190 missing ones look like the facade-kit and theatre-trim placements that run as separate steps.
One directory with sixty scripts stopped being navigable, and the grouping is also the sandbox boundary:
Tools/unreal/ commandlets and the two map builders, with ue_common.py and ue_placement.py as the
shared imports (they need the engine)
Tools/blender/ builders, exporters, the FBX preset, the MPFB character pipeline, blender_screenshots
(they need the Blender Flatpak)
Tools/review/ the visual loop: render_screenshots.sh, judge_screenshot.py, hero_compare.py,
build_comparison_md.py, e2e_asset_check.py, hero_iterate.sh, visual_loop.py,
visual_targets.json
Tools/gen/ image and texture generation: the ComfyUI driver, deterministic texture writers,
reference fetching
Tools/input/ OS-level input injection
root _common.py, check-lfs.sh, addon_compat_probe.py, sibling_asset_audit.py, tests/
Every moved script now resolves the repository root as ../.. and puts the tools root plus its siblings on
sys.path, so 'import ue_common' still works from unreal/. The test suite bootstrap does the same for the five
folders. render_screenshots.sh takes the folder as a third argument to run_cmdlet, and the e2e driver,
hero_iterate.sh and the comparison generator were repointed.
51 README rows now link to their new location, the README gains a Layout section naming each folder's
sandbox, and the architecture notes and Blender README follow the moves.
Verified: 108 tests pass, prettier is clean, judge_screenshot.py and hero_compare.py run from their new
homes, and the e2e run was aborted mid-way (it had been rebuilding an empty DemoMap for 15 minutes) and is
being rerun against the new layout.
zwitschi