Two defects from the 0.2.0 review, both fixed and both measured.
- Fingers splayed because the bind is an A-pose hand. All three joints of all five
fingers per hand are curled in the standing base (0.28/0.34/0.22 rad), with the
curl axis probed on the rig first. The front shot now shows relaxed hands.
- The arms-down rotation is derived on every build instead of hard-coded: the
builder sweeps candidate angles and returns the one whose bone direction points at
the target (0.60 rad, direction dot 1.000 this build). The old 0.55 was a
hand-swept constant.
- Base bones are keyed in both clips, so a clip that only animates the limbs cannot
drop the standing offset.
Regression, recorded rather than hidden: the stride shot shows a standing pose again
after this change. The probe had shown the walk clip playing (speed=28
clip=GigLine_Walk) before it, and pinning the clip to a quarter cycle did not restore
the stride, so the cause needs a fresh look. The shot is retired rather than shipped
broken, and the known-issues table now points at it.
Shot 8 shows the body mid-stride in profile: legs apart, arms counter-swinging. The
traversal release check for 0.2.0 is closed with that evidence.
The reason earlier attempts froze on one pose was not the clip. A probe of the
single-node instance showed the clip advancing normally (assetTime 0.19 -> 1.03,
rate 1.0, playing) while the pawn's speed stayed 0 and the clip stayed Idle: the
call that enables walking sat in the shot sequencer's BeginPlay, which runs before
the player pawn exists, so the cast found nothing and silently did nothing. Moved
into the per-frame follow update, the same run logs walk=1 speed=28 clip=GigLine_Walk
and the stride appears.
Also: the walk expectation was missing from visual_targets.json after the earlier
retirement, so --verify was checking 7 shots while 8 were captured. Restored; 8/8
verify.
The shot actor can now photograph a moving pawn: a per-shot ShotFollow flag re-places
the camera every frame at a fixed offset in the pawn's frame, and the walk is driven
per shot (SetReviewWalk) with the pawn returned to spawn after a follow shot, so the
fixed-camera shots later in the list still find it in place. With that, the capture
stopped depending on where a 4.5 m/s pawn happened to be.
Two further bugs fixed on the way:
- the engine's screenshot folder is cleared before each run. The collect step copies
every review-*.png it finds in Saved/, so a shot retired from the camera list kept
reappearing with byte-identical content from an older run - which is how a walk shot
that was never captured looked like a captured one.
- UpdateBodyAnimation no longer calls SetAnimation every frame. Re-setting the same
clip restarts it, which freezes the body on frame 0.
What the deterministic capture then exposed: the walk clip is applied but does not
advance - every walking frame shows the same pose (arms forward, legs together). The
stride shot is retired again rather than shipped, and TODO.md names the next step:
log GetCurrentAssetTime across frames and check the imported PlayRate. The harness
stays wired for when the clip plays.
Shots 6 and 7 were re-rendered after these changes and still pass; 7/7 verify.
Screenshots 6 and 7 are approved, so the remaining 0.2.0 work is the traversal
release check. This adds the piece of harness it needs - `-walk` holds forward input
from the first frame, so the pawn actually crosses the sidewalk while the third-person
rig follows it - and records what that check still lacks.
A stride shot was attempted three times and removed: a fixed review camera cannot
catch a pawn moving at 4.5 m/s. Each attempt framed it at a different distance and
the last two missed it entirely, so shipping it would have been a broken shot with a
green verification. The TODO item now says the blocker is the capture harness (a
camera that tracks the pawn), not the game, and names where the shot goes back in.
The flag stays because it is what the traversal check will drive.
The character now stands naturally: arms at its sides with a soft elbow bend, hands
at the hips, feet flat. Both character shots confirm it, front and back.
The root cause was not the pose. The FBX importer had been silently refusing to
replace the existing assets: after changing the arm base from 1.55 rad to 0.55 rad
and rebuilding, the imported clip returned the IDENTICAL bone quaternion
(+0.006, +0.002, -0.179, -0.984). replace_existing=True was set and delete_asset
returned False even after chmod u+w, because the pawn's constructor hard-references
the clips. Importing under a new name (CharacterV2) created fresh assets and the
same probe then returned (+0.439, +0.898) — the rotation had landed. Every earlier
attempt had been invisible for this reason.
The rotation itself is measured, not inherited: sweeping it in Blender gives 0.55 rad
for arms down and clear of the body, 0.65 for straight down against the hip, 0.75 for
past vertical and into the torso. It lives in the clamp keys, not in the bind: every
bind experiment was impossible on this shape-keyed MPFB mesh or left Unreal showing
the old bind.
Remaining, for 0.2.2: the fingers splay from the bind, and the walk clip has still
not been captured in motion.
The character now stands with its arms at its sides instead of in a bind A-pose,
and there is a second camera to prove it: the third-person shot only ever showed
the pawn's back, so a front-facing pose defect was invisible in review.
demo-third-person-front camera on the road, ~6 m in front, looking back north
at the pawn; embedded in Screenshots/README.md as shot 7.
The pose work itself is a chain of measured findings, all recorded in TODO.md:
- clip data is exported relative to the REST pose, so arms-down offsets held only in
the keys arrived as a ±20 degree swing around an A bind;
- a rest-pose bake alone does not move the mesh: the MPFB mesh has shape keys, the
armature modifier cannot be applied while they exist, and the vertices stayed in
the A shape (X span unchanged at 1.051 m). Clearing the shape keys, baking the
deformation into the vertices and re-binding is what made bind and clips agree.
Not settled, and left as an open item rather than a claim: the base pose uses
inverted signs to compensate for the FBX axis mapping, the upper arms clip into the
torso, and the fingers splay. An aim-based pose module was written and then removed
- applied without the vertex bake it produced arms raised in a V, and a half-working
shared module is worse than none. The proper solve is 0.2.2: apply the standing pose
at character creation, then author clips against that bind.
The body stood in an A-pose while the log said the clip was playing. Two
independent defects, found by querying the imported asset instead of guessing:
1. PlayAnimation needs the component in AnimationSingleNode with a live
single-node instance. The body is hidden at construction and only unhidden by
the camera toggle, so the first call could land before the component was ready,
and the Wanted == PlayingAnimation guard then returned forever. UpdateBodyAnimation
now sets the mode, calls SetAnimation + Play, and re-asserts while the instance
is missing.
2. The arms-down offsets lived only in the clip keys. The exporter writes clip data
relative to the rest pose, so they arrived as a ±20 degree swing around an
A-posed bind - which is exactly what the pose probe measured. apply_base_pose now
bakes them into the rest pose before any clip is authored, the same trick
mpfb_character_export.py --pose idle uses. The table is applied with inverted
signs: as written, the FBX axis mapping produced arms raised in a V.
Shot 6 confirms it: the arms hang at the sides. Still open and recorded - the idle
pose reads awkwardly (arms forward, hands splayed) and the walk clip has no shot in
motion; both are marked in TODO.md and Screenshots/README.md.
Instrumentation removed; the diagnostics that remain are behind
gigline.SetupLogs.
Conflicts resolved by union, not by picking a side:
- AGENTS.md keeps the stronger visual-review rule (README updated with every visual
change; a stale section is a defect).
- render_screenshots.sh keeps the absolute engine path from main and adds
-thirdperson from this branch - both were needed and neither alone worked.
- Screenshots/README.md now lists six shots, retail and third-person both embedded;
the known-issues tables merged, with the animation defect and unproven camera
collision added to main's rows.
- visual_targets.json carries both expectations.
- Architecture docs: ADR-8 (realistic buildings) and ADR-9 (third-person body) both
present and in numeric order; ADR-8 was mis-placed before the Quality Requirements
heading in the combined document by an earlier edit, now fixed.
- Binary conflicts resolved to main's content, since the retail trim only exists
there.
Checks: 82 tool tests, prettier clean, six embeds resolve.
Screenshots/README.md on this branch still used the path-only table, so a reviewer
had to open six PNGs to judge a pass. Every shot now has its own section with the
image embedded, its view, expected content and both verdicts, plus a status table
at the top that links to them.
The known-issues list becomes a table of issue -> version and item that owns it:
pale hero stone, hero entrance doors, the bind-pose animation defect, unproven
camera collision and the terrain-as-pavement strip all point at their TODO owner.
Two stale entries removed: the theatre marquee exists (six trim actors staged) and
'materials not yet created' contradicted the scene conventions.
AGENTS.md now says the README is updated with every visual change, that the image
is embedded inline, and that approval ticks both the section and the table row.
Also removed an orphan: review-demo-retail-frontage.png had been re-copied into
this branch by the capture step although its geometry only exists on
facade-retail-0.1.6.
One pawn, both rigs (ADR-9): a skeletal body hidden in first person, a
collision-tested spring arm, and a toggle that swaps the active camera and the
body's visibility. Shipped default stays first person; -thirdperson starts the
pawn in the third-person rig so the review shot is reproducible, and the
screenshot run passes it.
Three defects found and two fixed:
- The skin material had no SkeletalMesh usage flag, so Unreal silently substituted
the default grey. That is why the body rendered as clay.
- render_screenshots.sh still called ./Engine/... on this branch (the fix lives on
the facade branch and never reached main); applied here so the shots generate.
- OPEN: the idle clip is bound and PlayAnimation is called - the run logs the clip
name - but the body still renders in bind pose, arms out. Recorded with that
evidence in TODO.md rather than called done.
Shot 5 (demo-third-person) added and documented; camera collision is implemented
but unproven, since the spawn has open space behind it.
What the first pass got wrong, and what changed:
- The mural plates were placed 0.20 m INSIDE the solid blockout volume, so they
never rendered. Nothing can be recessed into a solid we do not cut: the inset is
now faked by a proud frame with a near-flush plate, and the row reads.
- Detail sat 0.05 m off the wall, under a pixel of depth at 40 m. Trim planes now
stand 0.10-0.20 m proud, and the parapet became two tiers with deeper reveals.
- 6806's parapet started at 0.62 H and left a 4.6 m blank band; the window storey
and parapet moved up to follow the photograph.
- Security bars on the upper windows, twelve fluted fins on the corner tower.
- The trim's stucco/white/glass slots are mapped onto the demo's look materials, so
the walls sit in the same noise/texture family as the rest of the block; the
colour slots sampled from the photograph stay as authored.
- Review camera pulled back and widened to 66 deg so the east end is in frame.
- The scene audit caught duplicate RetailTrim_ actors: the demo builder's clear list
did not include the new label, so every rebuild stacked another copy.
Still open and not fixable by geometry: wall lettering. A plate at 0.10 m does not
read at 40 m, so it moves to the 0.9.0 decal route (TODO.md, Screenshots/README.md).
Models the two retail buildings beside the hero from their own photograph rather
than the generic kit: bronze cornice, mural row, lettering band, stepped Deco
parapet and rounded corner tower on 6800 Lee Drug; burgundy fascia, pilasters,
white-framed windows and banded parapet on 6806-6820. Reference analysis written
before any geometry (Art/blender/retail/ref-analysis.md), every unmeasured
proportion carried into the part report as an assumption.
6822 Budget is deferred, not guessed: no photograph of it exists and the 6.0 x 5.5 m
sliver cannot be read out of the neighbour shot.
Pipeline fixes found on the way:
- render_screenshots.sh called ./Engine/... for the capture step while every
commandlet used the absolute path; set -e killed the script at 127 *after* the
maps were rebuilt, so screenshots silently stayed a day old.
- the facade kit applies to every Frontage_*/North_* actor, so it pasted its own
language over the new modelled facades; it now skips them, and the trim stages as
RetailTrim_*.
- pure bay arithmetic moved to Tools/_common.py so it is unit-testable without
Blender (4 new tests, 82 total pass).
Known gaps recorded in Screenshots/README.md, not hidden: the parapet reads as a
blank band, murals and lettering do not resolve at review distance, the tower is a
plain cylinder, and the review camera crops the east end.
Adds the five remaining verified south-side buildings to the demo block
(6922, 6902, 6838 El Capitan Theatre, 6822 Budget, 6806-6820, 6800 Lee Drug),
exported in place from the OSM blockout by Tools/export_block_frontage.py,
imported to /Game/Hollywood/Frontage/ and staged by the demo builder with the
look material set (stone for the theatres, stucco for the retail run).
Adding neighbours exposed a pre-existing placement bug that was invisible while
the hero facade stood alone in an empty field:
- UE south is +Y here (south sidewalk Y +718..+1447), but the hero sat at
Y -1450 on the NORTH side of the street.
- It was also at X -12024..-9420, 26 m east of the 6840 footprint; the frontage
gap between 6902 and 6838 is X -14591..-12082.
- The two north-side buildings were on the SOUTH side, because their exporter
mirrored Y.
Fixes: hero moved to X -13336 / Y +1307, inside its frontage gap; the frontage
and north-building exporters no longer apply a Y mirror (the FBX preset already
lands Blender -Y south on UE +Y south); player start and demo cameras moved to
the north sidewalk looking south; sun raised to pitch -62 so both frontages read
instead of the north side silhouetting.
Result: the demo is a street - continuous south frontage with the hero in it,
both sidewalks, the road with the designated crossing, and the north-side
buildings across the road.
Screenshots re-rendered and approved by the owner.
Squash of branch frontage-block-0.1.0 (PR #6).
Completes "Materials and look development for all exported assets". Every
exported surface previously carried a flat Constant3Vector fill, which read as
plastic. ensure_material() in Tools/ue_build_demo_map.py now builds a
procedural material per surface:
- base colour blended between two shades by world-space noise
(WorldPosition -> Multiply -> Noise -> Lerp -> BaseColor) for large-scale
variation,
- an explicit roughness and specular so the surface type is readable.
M_Asphalt 0.92, M_Concrete 0.88, M_KerbConcrete 0.85, M_Ground 0.98,
M_RoadPaint 0.62, M_FacadeStone 0.72, M_Stucco 0.86
Site meshes take their material by mesh name; the hero facade and the two
north-side buildings take theirs by actor label, so they are covered even
though other scripts stage them. Materials are deleted and rebuilt on every
run, so a look change cannot be masked by a stale asset.
Result: the facade reads as warm stone with surface variation, asphalt as dark
asphalt with grain, concrete and kerbs lighter and matte, and the north
buildings in stucco instead of flat grey.
Screenshots re-rendered and approved by the owner. The richer texture-based
pass (baked/procedural brick_facade, seamless_concrete, glass, material
instances) stays in the 0.1.4 facade patch.
Squash of branch materials-lookdev-0.1.0 (PR #5).
Completes "Geographic attribution display" for 0.1.0. The demo is built from
OpenStreetMap data (ODbL 1.0) and needs attribution wherever the derived work
is shown, so the credit now lives in the running game, not just the documents.
- AGigLineHUD (C++): plain AHUD::DrawText in the bottom-left draws
"(c) OpenStreetMap contributors" and "Data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors,
ODbL 1.0 - openstreetmap.org/copyright", with a shadow pass so it stays
legible over bright pavement and sky. No UMG widget asset is involved, so a
cook cannot drop the attribution through a missing widget reference.
- AGigLineGameModeBase: HUDClass = AGigLineHUD, so the credit is on by default
in both the DemoMap and the ReviewMap.
- AGigLineShotActor: screenshots are requested with the UI shown, so the credit
appears in every capture under Screenshots/ - the obligation is provable from
the images rather than only described.
Docs:
- THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES records that the attribution is displayed in-game and
where the code lives.
- Screenshots/README documents the overlay.
- TODO marks the item done and narrows the remaining ODbL question to the
shipped-derivative-database posture.
Squash of branch gameplay-attribution-0.1.0 (PR #4).
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).
Root cause of the empty review frames: EditorLevelLibrary.load_level/new_level
are deprecated no-ops in -nullrhi commandlets, so staged actors landed in the
current world and got saved over the wrong map. Switched both map builders to
the LevelEditorSubsystem and reordered the review builder to save ReviewMap
before the DemoMap section (the switch-back to a map that only exists in
memory silently failed, writing demo content over ReviewMap).
Rebuilt both maps, re-rendered every screenshot; user visual check passed.
Screenshots/README.md cube naming corrected (A grounded, B floating), approval
states updated; TODO.md visual-review notes closed. MEMORY.md records the
deprecated-call and save-order traps.
- New C++ AGigLineNPCPerson: reusable NPC/pedestrian prefab built on the MPFB
human. ACharacter capsule half-height 83 cm (total 1.66 m, head top ~1.66 m
so a 1.60 m camera doesn't clip), the character skeletal mesh on the built-in
mesh as the visible body (feet on Z 0), AutoPossessAI for 0.5.0 pedestrians.
Staged at Z 0 in the review scene; captured as review-npc-prefab.png.
- AGigLineShotActor now names screenshots by stable camera name (no list-index
prefix): inserting or reordering cameras no longer renumbers files or orphans
the old ones. Re-rendered all review/demo shots with stable names.
- ue_build_review_map.py: chmod the target .umap before save_map (git marks maps
444 on checkout, silently making save_map return False and dropping stages).
- Screenshots/README.md, ROADMAP, TODO updated for the prefab + stable names.
- DemoMap.umap rebuilt by the render pipeline (north buildings + demo cameras).
- Drop the /Screenshots/* gitignore exclusion so review PNGs are committed
(LFS-tracked) alongside the review README.
- AGENTS.md Visual review: PNGs are now committed, not kept only on disk.
- 13 review/demo screenshots tracked (25 MB LFS).
- mpfb_character_export.py: new --pose idle folds the A/T-bind arms down to
a relaxed standing rest pose (baked via pose.armature_apply before export);
new make_diffuse synthesizes a warm skin-tone diffuse with a darker
shorts-suggestive band, replacing the Cycles v2-skin bake that came out
black and was slow at 1024^2.
- write_png now encodes from img.pixels via numpy (fast) because img.save()
writes black for an in-memory image.
- Re-exported idle character, re-imported to /Game/Test/Character (138 bones,
warm M_Character_Export/T_Character_Diffuse); removed stale T_Skin_Diffuse.
- Untracked the review PNGs again: the Screenshots/ gitignore rule had been
dropped and the parallel session had committed the PNGs, against the
AGENTS.md 'never commit the PNGs' rule. Restored the ignore rule; only
Screenshots/README.md stays tracked.
- README/roadmap/memory updated; review-01-character re-pended for approval.
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