The 0.1.2 blockout regeneration ran without --origin, so Blosm centred on the
extract instead of fitting the project frame. The frontage shifted ~119 m in X and
~2.4 m in Y and the hero fell outside the 6902/6838 gap - the verified placement
was silently undone, while every render still looked like a plausible block.
- Blockout regenerated with --origin 34.101545,-118.338718 (affine residual 0.0 cm);
frontage and north buildings re-exported and re-imported.
- Verified spans restored: 6922 -24276..-17700, 6902 -17749..-14591, hero
-14644..-12028 between them, theatre -12082..-8210, TCL -22889..-18442,
Tussaud's -27071..-22799.
- ue_apply_facade_kit now uses get_actor_bounds() (world space). It had used the
static mesh bounding box, which is building-line-local, so every kit piece was
placed ~12 km east of its building in empty ground.
- ue_import_north_buildings.py was missing 'import sys' (NameError, exit 255,
import silently skipped) - the same trap as the hero importer.
- Kit re-applied: 625 pieces across eight buildings; packaged QA still PASS
(walk, transect 0 holes, wall probe 0/35, facade probe 0/9).
New Tools/generate_facade_textures.py: deterministic, stdlib-only PNG generator for
four facade surface sets (ashlar stone, stucco, asphalt, concrete), each as base
colour (_BC) plus roughness (_R). Pure zlib encoder and hash-based value noise, so
re-running produces byte-identical files (verified by md5sum); ~14 s for eight 512²
maps.
ue_build_demo_map.py imports them into /Game/Hollywood/Textures and samples them
world-aligned: WorldPosition (cm) * 1/tile_cm -> ComponentMask(R,G) -> TextureSample
UVs, with per-material tile sizes (stone 440, stucco 260, asphalt 900, concrete
250 cm). A textured material skips the graph coursing deliberately - overlaying both
would double the course pattern.
Textures imported 8/8, hero 4/4 slots assigned, map saved; screenshots re-rendered.
0.1.4 materials pass plus the camera fix levelling exposed.
Materials (Tools/ue_build_demo_map.py):
- ensure_material() gains optional masonry coursing (world-space course height,
joint band, joint tint) and roughness variation, so facades read as coursed
stone/stucco instead of one flat specular plane.
- WorldPosition is in centimetres: course heights in metres are scaled by 100
(the first attempt divided by 0.55 and the coursing was invisible).
- connect_material_expressions returns False rather than raising, so every link
now goes through a link() helper that logs failures; UE has no
MaterialExpressionLess, so the joint mask is Frac -> Divide -> OneMinus -> Clamp.
- New materials: M_FacadeStoneShadow, M_FacadeGlass (specular 0.62 ~ IOR 1.5),
M_FacadeBanner.
- Material assignment is now per SLOT keyed on the imported slot material name.
It was slot-0 only, which on the hero is the banner, so stone, shadow stone and
glazing still wore flat Blender materials. Hero now 4/4 slots.
Cameras (GigLineShotActor + ue_build_review_map):
- Optional per-shot ShotFieldOfView; the shot tuples take a 4th element.
- Elevations use a 42-55 deg lens from across the street: with the cameras
levelled (0.1.2 follow-up) the building was small in frame, and tilting to fill
it is what breaks the verticals. hero-facade-front sky 39% -> 20%,
demo-spawn-view 23% -> 16%.
Screenshots re-rendered for the whole set.
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).
Tools/ue_build_demo_map.py builds /Game/Hollywood/DemoMap: sun, sky, the hero
facade on the building line, six site meshes imported with collision, and a
player start on the north sidewalk. Tools/ue_import_site.py imports the site
FBXs; terrain, road and sidewalks use complex-as-simple so a simple hull cannot
ramp over the kerbs. Art/blender/site/export_site_fbx.py exports one FBX per
object so each can carry its own collision.
Reset (R) and pause (Escape) join the character and the input context: reset
restores the spawn transform and clears momentum, pause is a real game pause that
releases the cursor. DefaultInput.ini captures the mouse on launch.
Three placement defects found by measuring the imported actors rather than
trusting the plan: the spawn was on the wrong sidewalk because the FBX flip
inverts north, a mirror I added to the exporter double-corrected an already
correct sidewalk, and the street meshes only carry part of the north walk - the
rest is terrain.
zwitschi