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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- TCL Chinese Theatre (6925) and Madame Tussaud's (6933) exported from the
verified OSM blockout with ue_metric_v1 (export_north_buildings.py), with a
Y-mirror so they land north of the road, across from the hero facade.
- ue_import_north_buildings.py imports + stages them in the DemoMap as
North_TCL_Chinese / North_Madame_Tussauds (TCL Y 1802..9431, Tussaud's
1888..7586; hero at Y -1450, road centreline ~0).
- render_screenshots.sh now also runs the DemoMap capture pass; added a
demo-north-buildings camera, so the new buildings get a review shot.
- README/roadmap updated; flat facade materials pending the 0.1.4 patch.
Roadmap gains two sections: 'Review scene and player placement' (this pass) and
'Character development' (follow-on). The camera list is now one table of
(name, location, target) with look-at rotations computed from the pairs, so a
camera cannot drift out of aim when one number changes.
New shots: player-placement (the real pawn, staged in the build script),
ground-contact (knee height, feet on the plane), shadow-compare (floating vs
grounded cube from a low angle), and hero-portals (whole elevation).
The review floor grows to 160 m so the facade stands on ground rather than the
horizon band. Retired: the first-person shot.
Honest gap recorded in the roadmap: the hero portals sit behind the colonnade and
do not resolve from the review floor; that needs a camera on the plinth or a
portal rebuild, not another angle.
- AGigLineShotActor (dev-only): walks a fixed camera list in -game mode,
captures via FScreenshotRequest, quits. Test content only.
- ue_build_review_map.py builds /Game/Test/ReviewMap from current content
(gray floor, key light, sky, MPFB character, 1 m scale cubes).
- render_screenshots.sh: build map -> run game -> collect PNGs into
gitignored Screenshots/.
- Screenshots/README.md (committed) describes each capture with approval
state; AGENTS.md gains the visual-review instructions.
zwitschi