The first pass crushed readability ('can't see anything'): dark ground x low ambient x dim sun x +12 contrast (clipped everything below midtone to black) x vignette x dark fog. Rebalanced toward legibility while keeping the dark-frontier mood: ColorAdjustments contrast 12->4 (the main fix), post-exposure 0.55->0.85, saturation 0->4; sun 0.9->1.5 cool-white; ambient intensity 0.62->1.0 with lifted cool ambient colors; vignette 0.32->0.20; ground material lifted ~18%->~28% value; fog pushed out (start 18->26, end 42->60); Core beacon range 9->13. Ground, player silhouette, Ore ring and shadows now all read; Core stays the bright cyan peak.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Research-grounded transform of the base arena from a bright meadow into a dark 'Aether Siege Outpost' reading as a concentric bullseye (Core -> Ore ring -> dark perimeter). Camera (Game.unity): pitch 45->58, FOV 55->44, dist 13->17, lead 1->0.5, follow 8->6, targetH 1.3 (telephoto so Core + arena read together, near-iso enemy spacing). Lighting: sun dimmed+cooled 1.6->0.9, ambient 1.0->0.62 dark-cool, fog Linear 18->42 dark; WorldAtmosphere base darkened. Post-FX (PostFX_Daylight): ACES kept, bloom gated (thr 1.0->1.2 + clamp 10), exposure/contrast up, saturation +6->0, added ShadowsMidtonesHighlights cool-shadow/warm-highlight split, vignette 0.15->0.32. Ground re-tinted dark teal-grey; ~390 meadow-cheer objects cut. Core staged as hero (crystal 14m->4.6m cyan glow + cyan beacon light). Ore ring pulled into the arena (23.5-27m -> 6-11.5m, count 10->12) and recoloured AMBER (new Mat_OreNode_Amber, emissive, no atlas bleed).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
14 newly-imported Synty Polygon packs (~2.46 GB; FBX/PNG/textures stored in
Git LFS per .gitattributes). Enemy-grade characters: Werewolf, Kaiju,
FantasyHeroCharacters, Vikings, Western, HorrorCarnival, Dog. Environment:
Nature, NatureBiomes, PNB_Core, FantasyKingdom. UI/icons: Icons,
InterfaceCore, InterfaceSciFiSoldierHUD.
Werewolf + Kaiju back the DR-023 animated enemies; the rest are cataloged
for future work in Docs/Vault/06_Roadmap/Synty_Asset_Inventory.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
kronic