Files
gig-line/Screenshots
zwitschi 7b9a7a3867 fix(hero): seat the façade detail on the wall, so it renders at all
The three hero captures showed a plain block with six columns because every applied detail sat BEHIND the
wall's front face, inside the solid mass:

  Hero_Banner_1   y -1.08..-1.02   (55 cm inside)
  Hero_Portal_1   y -2.35..-1.15   (2 m inside)
  Hero_Window_1_1 y -0.60..-0.52   (2 cm inside)

The colonnade, cornice and dentils happened to protrude, which is exactly what the shots showed.

The depth is now stated once, in hero_facade_build.py: FRONT_Y is the wall's front face and
seat_on_front() moves every applied part until its street-facing face sits at FRONT_Y + offset - 8 cm for
banners and jambs, 5 cm for entablature and cornice, 3 cm for window panes, 4 cm for mullions, 10 cm for
portal signs. It reports what it moved, 99 parts.

After re-export, re-import and re-render the front elevation now shows the three red banners, the two
window bands, the dentil course and the portals. What is still missing against the reference: rusticated
banding on the stone, lettering on the motto band, grilles in the windows, a balustrade on the parapet, and
the blank lintel band across the portals that the reference does not have.

Rows 4, 5 and 6 are back to pending for review because the images changed.
2026-11-10 07:59:51 +01:00
..

Screenshots

Two reviews in one file:

  • ReviewMap stages imported assets on their own — individual objects, the Blender import, the camera angles and the lighting comparison. Nothing from the game map is involved.
  • DemoMap is the actual game map as it is being developed: the street, the buildings, the player and the vehicle in their real placement.

Both capture passes are produced by Tools/render_screenshots.sh; the asset renders come from Tools/blender_screenshots.py.

Status

This is the only place approval state and issue notes are recorded. Every image requires a fresh approval because every image changed. All 23 shots are approved; the three hero-facade rows are excluded from this pass and tracked in TODO.md.

# Part Item Status Note
1 ReviewMap character feet [x] approved
2 ReviewMap character [x] approved
3 ReviewMap ground contact [x] approved
4 ReviewMap hero facade front [ ] re-rendered after the detail was seated on the wall: banners, windows, portals and dentils are visible now; still flat stone, no lettering, blank band over the portals
5 ReviewMap hero facade oblique [ ] re-rendered after the detail was seated on the wall: banners, windows, portals and dentils are visible now; still flat stone, no lettering, blank band over the portals
6 ReviewMap hero portals [ ] re-rendered after the detail was seated on the wall: banners, windows, portals and dentils are visible now; still flat stone, no lettering, blank band over the portals
7 ReviewMap npc prefab [x]
8 ReviewMap overview [x] approved
9 ReviewMap player placement [x] approved
10 ReviewMap scale cubes [x] fixed: resting cube was floating 48 cm, now measured onto the floor
11 ReviewMap shadow compare [x] approved
12 ReviewMap vehicle [x] approved
13 DemoMap crossing [x]
14 DemoMap feet [x] approved
15 DemoMap north buildings [x]
16 DemoMap retail frontage [x]
17 DemoMap spawn view [x] approved
18 DemoMap street level [x] approved
19 DemoMap third person front [x] approved
20 DemoMap third person walk [x] approved
21 DemoMap third person [x] approved
22 DemoMap vehicle [x] approved
23 DemoMap wheel [x] approved

Status: [ ] pending · [x] approved · [R] rejected. "ReviewMap" rows are asset staging; "DemoMap" rows are the game map.

Blender vs UE

Blender vs in-game

Regenerated by Tools/build_comparison_md.py; everything between the markers is rewritten, so edit outside them.

  • Captures: Screenshots/review/ and Screenshots/demo/ (23 files)
  • Blender renders: Screenshots/blender/ (22 files), made by Tools/blender_screenshots.py

Left is what the engine draws, right is what Blender has. A gap between them is the import problem, not a taste problem: scale, material colour, missing parts and split systems all show up here before they show up in a review.

Side by side

In-game Blender Shot
review-character-feet.png
review-character.png
— review-ground-contact.png
— review-hero-facade-front.png
— review-hero-facade-oblique.png
— review-hero-portals.png
— review-npc-prefab.png
— review-overview.png
— review-player-placement.png
— review-scale-cubes.png
— review-shadow-compare.png
review-vehicle.png
— review-demo-crossing.png
— review-demo-feet.png
— review-demo-north-buildings.png
— review-demo-retail-frontage.png
— review-demo-spawn-view.png
— review-demo-street-level.png
review-demo-third-person-front.png
review-demo-third-person-walk.png
review-demo-third-person.png
review-demo-vehicle.png
— review-demo-wheel.png

7 of 23 in-game captures have a Blender counterpart; the rest are street and building shots whose meshes come from the Geo pipeline rather than a .blend.

Approval and issue notes are recorded only in the status table at the top of this file.

ReviewMap — asset staging

The staging map (/Game/Test/ReviewMap, built by Tools/ue_build_review_map.py) always stages the assets the latest Blender import produced: the character with its hair, clothing and materials, the vehicle's five systems, the scale cubes, the NPC prefab and the hero facade.

Shot Shows
review-character-feet.png
review-character.png
review-ground-contact.png
review-hero-facade-front.png
review-hero-facade-oblique.png
review-hero-portals.png
review-npc-prefab.png
review-overview.png
review-player-placement.png
review-scale-cubes.png
review-shadow-compare.png
review-vehicle.png

DemoMap — in-game

1. Spawn view

Spawn view: the whole south block from the north sidewalk

  • File: demo/review-demo-spawn-view.png
  • View: north sidewalk, 14 m back, level horizon
  • Expected content: the whole south block — the neoclassical hero façade between its neighbouring buildings, both sidewalks and the road in the foreground

2. Street level

Street level: the hero colonnade at eye height

  • File: demo/review-demo-street-level.png
  • View: eye height, north side
  • Expected content: the hero colonnade with the adjacent frontage buildings either side, shopfronts at pavement level

3. Crossing

Crossing: the designated mid-block crossing with zebra bars

  • File: demo/review-demo-crossing.png
  • View: from the north sidewalk along the crosswalk
  • Expected content: the designated mid-block crossing (s=130 m, UE X −14956) — zebra bars on the asphalt, south frontage and colonnade behind

4. North buildings

North buildings: TCL Chinese Theatre and Madame Tussaud's from the south

  • File: demo/review-demo-north-buildings.png
  • View: across the Boulevard from the south side
  • Expected content: the two north-side buildings (TCL Chinese Theatre, Madame Tussaud's), full height in frame

5. Retail frontage

Retail frontage: 6800 Lee Drug and 6806–6820 from across the street

  • File: demo/review-demo-retail-frontage.png
  • View: north sidewalk, level horizon, 68° lens
  • Expected content: the retail run beside the hero — 6800 Lee Drug's bronze cornice, mural row and parapet next to 6806–6820's burgundy fascia, pilasters and window storey

Read this one against the reference photograph it was modelled from: Art/reference/retail-neighbours/01-lee-drug-and-neighbor.jpg (Gb321, CC BY-SA 4.0).

Known gaps in this first pass, recorded rather than hidden:

  • The parapet still reads as a blank band. It is now two tiers with three deeper reveals, and the step is visible, but there is no profile or shadow line to break the wall — a moulded coping and a modelled reveal need the 0.9.0 façade system.
  • The mural row now reads (framed plates standing 0.12–0.20 m off the wall), but the lettering band does not: it is a plate at 0.10 m and it disappears at 40 m. Wall lettering is a decal/texture problem, scoped in 0.9.0; no amount of extra plate depth fixed it in the second pass.
  • The corner tower is a plain cylinder with two cap rings — the stepped Deco profile in the photograph is richer than that.
  • The camera crops the east end of Lee Drug at 68° from the north sidewalk.
  • 6822 Budget is untouched and still a bare blockout volume: no photograph of it exists.

6. Third-person body

Third-person body: the player pawn standing on the north sidewalk, seen from behind

  • File: demo/review-demo-third-person.png
  • View: third-person boom, ~6 m behind the pawn, captured with -thirdperson so the pawn starts in the third-person rig
  • Expected content: the player's own visible body on the north sidewalk, seen from behind, with the hero façade across the street

What this shot is evidence for:

  • The pawn carries a visible skeletal body with the warm skin material, and a spring-arm camera with collision testing. The V toggle swaps first and third person; the shipped default stays first person and the review passes -thirdperson.
  • The idle clip drives the body and the arms hang at the sides, with the hands at the hips and the feet flat. Earlier captures of this shot showed a bind A-pose.
  • Hair is present as a dark card system hugging the skull (three overlapping rows), not the spiked crown of the first attempt. The strand sheet supplies only the opacity mask; the colour is a dark constant, because using the sheet's pale RGB as base colour made the cut read blond and thin.
  • The body is clothed since 0.2.2: navy tee, dark jeans and off-white shoes as three separate skinned meshes, attached on leader-pose components.

Changed 2026-11-09 by 0.2.2 (clothing, hair, raised sun); approved 2026-11-09 in that state.

Still open, tracked in TODO.md:

  • Camera collision is implemented but unproven: the spawn has open space behind it, so no shot exercises the arm shortening.

7. Third-person front

Third-person front: the player body from the road, arms at the sides

  • File: demo/review-demo-third-person-front.png
  • View: from the road, ~6 m in front of the pawn, looking back north. The pawn spawns facing +Y, so this is its front
  • Expected content: the clothed character from the front — navy tee, dark jeans, off-white shoes, dark hair — arms hanging at the sides with the hands by the hips

Why the shot exists: the third-person shot only ever shows the pawn's back, so a pose defect on the front — arms out, hands splayed, a face pointing the wrong way — was invisible in review. This angle is the check for it.

What it shows: the arms hang down with a soft elbow bend, the hands sit at hip height with the fingers curled, the upper arms clear the torso, and the character wears the navy tee, dark jeans and off-white shoes built in 0.2.2. Hair is a dark card system hugging the skull.

Changed 2026-11-09 by 0.2.2: clothing (tee, jeans, shoes as separate skinned meshes), dark hair cards, and a raised sun. The raised sun matters here: the character used to stand in building shadow lit by the blue sky light, which made warm skin sample as blue-grey — face (99, 98, 100) before, (131, 121, 117) after. Approved 2026-11-09 after the change.



8. Third-person walk

Third-person walk: the body mid-stride in profile

  • File: demo/review-demo-third-person-walk.png
  • View: tracking camera, 4.2 m to the pawn's right, captured while the pawn walks south
  • Expected content: the clothed body mid-stride in profile — legs apart, arms counter-swinging, navy tee and jeans

Why the earlier attempts failed, twice: the first was a harness problem (a fixed camera cannot catch a pawn at 4.5 m/s, and the call that enables walking ran before the pawn existed). The second was the clip itself: the walk cycle was authored on a sine, which is zero at both the start and the middle of the cycle, so the capture kept landing on the two frames where the legs pass together and the image read as a still. The clip now starts at maximum stride (cosine), so any frame near the start shows the stride. The cycle length, amplitudes and loop are unchanged.


9. Vehicle

Vehicle: the hot hatch staged on the road

  • File: demo/review-demo-vehicle.png
  • View: from the road, ~7 m from the car, FOV 45
  • Expected content: the red hot hatch from Art/blender/vehicle/hot hatch.blend — body, tinted glazing, four wheels — resting on the surface

10. Feet

Feet: ground-level view of the character's feet

  • File: demo/review-demo-feet.png
  • View: at pavement height, looking along the ground at the character's feet
  • Expected content: both shoes touching the pavement, shadow starting at the contact point

11. Wheel

Wheel: ground-level view of the car's wheels

  • File: demo/review-demo-wheel.png
  • View: at pavement height, looking along the ground at the car's wheels
  • Expected content: the tyres touching the surface, shadow at the contact point

The iteration loop (uncommitted)

Tools/visual_loop.py measures each capture against its reference photograph and turns the deltas into modelling actions for the Blender skill packs:

python3 Tools/visual_loop.py --compare --iteration 3   # writes Art/reference/iterations/3/

That directory is gitignored: iterations stay uncommitted until a shot is confirmed, and only confirmed shots are promoted into Screenshots/demo/. The feedback file names the affected skill (blender-modeler, archviz, materials, lookdev, camera-cinematography) so the next modelling pass has a starting point rather than an opinion.

Note the comparison is only meaningful when the shot and the reference frame the same subject — a wide block view measured against a tight façade crop will always report low edge similarity.

Scene conventions

  • Demo map (/Game/Hollywood/DemoMap): fixed daytime — sun pitch −62 / yaw 120 (intensity 4, warm), sky light 2.6, sky atmosphere, height fog, fixed exposure.
  • Cameras: elevation shots sit at their target height (pitch 0, so verticals stay parallel) and use a 42–68° lens to fill the frame from across the street.
  • Materials: every surface carries a look-developed material from Tools/ue_build_demo_map.py — noise-blended base colour, masonry coursing, and a generated texture set (Tools/generate_facade_textures.py) sampled world-aligned. Explicit roughness and specular per surface type.

Known cosmetic issues

Every issue is tracked in TODO.md under the version that will fix it; an issue with no ticket is a bug in the plan, not a note.

Issue Where it is tracked State
Hero stone renders pale — the material is a procedural graph and a generated texture set, not a measured surface 0.9.0 → measured material library Open
Hero façade has no doors at street level left and right of the central bay, and the central-bay elements (columns, stairs, set-back entrance, door frames, signage) are not positioned as the photographs show 0.9.0 → per-building models, hero façade Open
Nothing may stand in front of the hero façade that blocks it — no awning, no temporary structure 0.9.0 → per-building models, hero façade Open
Retail parapet has no moulded profile, and wall lettering built as a plate does not read at 40 m 0.9.0 → 6800 Lee Drug and 6806–6820, second pass Open (moved out of 0.1.6)
6822 Budget is a bare blockout volume — no photograph exists to model it from 0.9.0 → photography gap Deferred (moved out of 0.1.6)
Camera collision is implemented but never exercised against a wall 0.2.0 → camera collision Open
Skin renders darker than the baked diffuse suggests — the material graph may have been half-rebuilt by a crashed commandlet run 0.2.2 → skin and hair tuning Open
The generated pore and strand textures are not wired: the material-editing tool segfaults in the headless commandlet 0.2.2 → skin and hair tuning Open
The walk clip has never been captured in motion — it imports and its curves carry the stride, but no shot shows it 0.2.0 → verify animation plays correctly Open
Between kerb and building line the walkable surface is the terrain mesh, not a modelled pavement 0.6.0 → model the pavement between kerb and building line Open

Accepted by the owner, not a defect:

  • Banners hang on the column line rather than flush to the wall — that is how they hang in the photographs.

Resolved and removed from this list on 2026-11-09:

  • "The El Capitan Theatre has no marquee or blade sign" — Tools/ue_stage_theatre_trim.py stages all six trim actors; verified in /tmp/gigline/theatre-import.txt.
  • "Materials are not yet created in Blender or fully integrated" — contradicted by the scene conventions above: every surface carries a look-dev material built in Tools/ue_build_demo_map.py.