# NPC roster visual review — 0.9.9 signoff

**Status: awaiting owner visual signoff.** This page is the single review point for the
Quaternius roster swap that shipped in 0.9.9
([ADR-0017](adr/0017-quaternius-npc-base.md), [ADR-0018](adr/0018-quaternius-stage2-runtime-rig.md)).
Every character name the game ships is captured here at gameplay distance, in three studio views,
and in the three animation poses the runtime drives.

Until this page is signed off, the roster swap is reversible: the procedural library and the
MakeHuman head are still in the tree and still pass `audit`, `inspect`, `npc_proportions` and the
tests (`build --source procedural`).

## 1. Full-body roster (12 roles)

One tile per shipped character, neutral studio, camera at 4.2 m.

![NPC roster full body](blender_previews/sheet_npc_roster_0.9.9.jpg)

## 2. Front and profile per role

Front row set, then profile. Use this to judge the silhouette, the head size and the gear placement
without perspective hiding anything.

![NPC roster front and profile](blender_previews/sheet_npc_roster_views_0.9.9.jpg)

## 3. Animation poses (idle / sit / walk contact)

Six representative roles × three poses, driven by the real `_animate()` path with the FSM frozen.
Check: arms hang instead of holding an A-pose, the seated pose puts the forearms on the thighs and
keeps the shins down, the walk contact keeps limbs in contralateral opposition, and no limb
pinches or detaches at the shoulder, elbow, hip or knee.

![NPC roster poses](blender_previews/sheet_npc_roster_poses_0.9.9.jpg)

## 4. Crowd distance (8 m)

The distance the player actually sees a passer-by from the sidewalk.

![NPC roster at crowd distance](blender_previews/sheet_npc_roster_crowd_0.9.9.jpg)

## Signoff checklist

Tick each row. Anything you reject is a concrete task rather than an opinion, so it can go
straight into `TODO.md`.

| # | Question | Verdict |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Do the twelve characters read as distinct people at 8 m? | [x] yes [ ] no |
| 2 | Is the head size right for the body (no bobblehead, no pinhead)? | [x] yes [ ] no |
| 3 | Do the faces hold up at portrait distance? | [ ] yes [x] no |
| 4 | Do the hands and the hand-held gear (camera, cup, clipboard, sign) read correctly? | [ ] yes [x] no |
| 5 | Does the head gear (cap, hood, sunglasses, firefighter helmet) sit on the skull? | [ ] yes [x] no |
| 6 | Are the role outfits believable for a Hollywood-boulevard shift (tourist, delivery, guard, responder)? | [x] yes [ ] no |
| 7 | Are the seeded tint palettes acceptable, or too pastel/saturated? | [x] yes [ ] no |
| 8 | Do the seated and walking poses hold up? | [x] yes [ ] no |

**Signoff:** [ ] approved as shipped [x] approved with the follow-ups below [ ] rejected

## Issues visible in the captures

The first review pass found three body defects. All three came from the build pipeline,
not the art, and all three are addressed in the second pass (2026-11-06):

| Finding | Cause | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `npc_guard` has holes in the upper body | the build **deleted** the `Worker_Vest` material, and on the modular Worker the vest *is* the torso | **fixed** — the vest is now the `cloth` slot, tinted per role; nothing is deleted |
| `npc_firefighter`, `npc_crowd_d` have a broken shoulder/upper-body area | same cause, plus the deleted `Worker_Yellow` hat was the crown of the skull, leaving the head open | **fixed** — the hat/crown stays in the mesh and only the part above z 1.65 takes the `hair` tint |
| `npc_guard`, `npc_vest`, `npc_crowd_d` have one big unibrow | the Worker's `Eyebrows` material is one continuous bar, and no other upstream head has brows that fit this mesh | **replaced** — the bar is cut out and the hoodie's two brows are transplanted onto the Worker head, lifted above the eye quads |
| `npc_dress`, `npc_jacket`, `npc_crowd_a`, `npc_crowd_d` arms intersect the body | the baked rest aimed the upper arm straight down, which works on the wide bases but not the narrow ones | **reduced** — the arm now rests 7° out from vertical (mesh width 0.180 → 0.220 on `casual`, 0.228 → 0.262 on `hoodie`); a light clip remains on the `worker` bases |

Follow-up pass (same day) went further on the Worker head, which still read as a hard hat under
the bare tint:

| Finding | Fix |
| --- | --- |
| crown still shaped like a hard hat | the hoodie's **hair** is transplanted onto the Worker head and the hat faces above the collar are cut away, so guard/responder/crowd_d have hair |
| the dark bar was the Worker's *eye* quads, not only the brow bar | the eye quads are removed too; the face now reads brows + moustache |
| performer cone swallowed the head, and the performer/protester props floated beside the body | `_add_props()` now parents carried props to the hand proxies and the cone shrank from a 0.44 m to a 0.25 m base |

Third pass traced the remaining "black bar across the eyes" to the **cap brim**, not to head
geometry: head gear is authored around the procedural head centre (1.62) but the Quaternius head
centre sits at 1.69, so every cap sat 7 cm low with its brim across the brows. `HEAD_GEAR_LIFT`
is now 0.103 and `GEAR_SCALE` grows the cap/hood to clear the 0.228 m hair shell. The vision judge
confirms on `npc_guard`: no bar or visor, eyes and brows separately visible, the cap sits on the
head, no holes.

Re-verified after the fix with the sheets below and the vision judge: no holes or missing geometry
on any of the three Worker-based roles.

**Still open** — checkpoint row 4 (hand-held gear) and the list below: the eye quads have no
whites, the `npc_vest` clipboard is oversized on the shorter arm, and the arms still graze the
torso on the `worker` base.

Found by user:

1. npc_firefighter, npc_guard and npc_crowd_d have errors in the body:
   - npc_guard has "holes" in upper body
   - npc_firefighter and npc_crowd_d have buggy shoulder and upper body area
2. npc_guard, npc_vest and npc_crowd_d have one large unibrow: use other character's eyebrow geometry instead.
3. npc_dress, npc_jacket, npc_crowd_a and npc_crowd_d arms are too close and intersecting the body

Found while building this page; none blocks the swap, all are queued in `TODO.md`:

1. **`npc_dress` wears the performer cone hat plus the protest sign** because the performer props
   are procedural and scaled for the old body. The dress itself has no geometry anymore — the role
   is the `casual` base with a dress tint.
2. **`npc_coat` and `npc_hoodie`** are the hoodie base with a coat/hood tint; the raised hood and
   the long coat silhouette are gone.
3. **The `npc_vest` clipboard** reads oversized at 0.23 × 0.31 m on the shorter Quaternius arm.
4. **The firefighter helmet brim** is 1.55× the head width — realistic for the helmet, but it reads
   as a wide-brim hat next to the small head.
5. **Skin and cloth read pale** on the `hoodie` and `worker` bases; the seeded palette was tuned
   against the procedural library's darker cloth.
6. **Roster variety is three meshes for twelve roles.** Tint and gear carry the difference; the
   modular part library is the fix.

## Measured facts for this build

| Metric | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Characters | 12, all on the Quaternius 62-joint rig |
| Triangles per character | 4,458 (`worker` minus vest) … 6,424 (`casual`) |
| glTF vertices per character | 9,370 … 13,440 |
| Budget | 24,000 tris / 24,000 verts per character |
| Tint slots | `skin`, `cloth`, `pants`, `hair`, `accessory`, plus fixed detail |
| Texel density | 73–74 px/m on the 256² maps |
| Height | 1.817–1.881 m |
| 24-NPC frame budget | 160,608 tris, 0.84 ms average frame (budget 50 ms) |
| Gates | `inspect` clean, `audit` 12/12, `fit` OK, Godot 278/278, Python 167/167 |

## Reproducing the captures

```sh
godot --path . --script res://src/test/capture_npc_baseline.gd -- --out=res://tmp/npc-signoff
godot --path . --script res://src/test/capture_npc_pose.gd -- --out=res://tmp/npc-signoff-pose \
  --pose=idle          # repeat for sit and walk_contact
```

## Superseded

This page previously carried the **0.9.4 procedural library** baseline (eight hand-built
characters, the face/hand/neck fixes, the 13-core proportion audit). That mesh no longer ships, so
the text is retired; the comparison sheets stay in `blender_previews/` as history:
`sheet_npc_baseline_compare-p1.jpg`, `-body.jpg`, `-torso.jpg`, `-face-detail.jpg`,
`sheet_npc_hands_compare.jpg`, `sheet_npc_hands_grip_compare.jpg`.

The current source evaluation and per-character build table live in
[`npc-model-sourcing.md#shipped-roster-099-owner-chose-the-full-swap`](npc-model-sourcing.md#shipped-roster-099-owner-chose-the-full-swap);
the face options that led to the full swap are in
[`screens/npc-face-gate/`](screens/npc-face-gate/README.md).