---
tags: [vision, art-direction, lantern, style-bible, workstream-a]
status: draft-binding
updated: 2026-07-13
permalink: gamevault/01-vision/art-direction-lantern
---

# LANTERN — Art Direction Lock (Workstream A0)

> The binding one-page style bible for [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]]'s art track (Workstream A0, runs inside
> Phase 0). Adopted under [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]]. This is the **written** half of A0; the
> gate is the **in-engine style-proof scene** (below), which is **not yet built** — Phase 0 does not exit
> until it is approved. The readability law is lifted verbatim from [[Identity_Lantern#Art, audio & the
> readability law|the identity]] and applies to every asset from day one.
>
> **Why this matters more than usual:** one developer, learning Blender, shipping custom creatures. This
> direction lives or dies on a **repeatable factory**, not on any single beautiful asset. Every rule here is
> chosen so that creature N+1 is a routine sitting, not a research project.

## Style bible (binding)

- **Stylized low-poly, RoR2-lineage.** Silhouette-first; faceted geometry; flat / near-flat shading. Mood is
  carried by **dynamic light in murk**, never by texture detail. A readable blob with a great light beats a
  detailed model nobody can see in the dark.
- **Poly budgets (hard):** props **≤ ~800 tris** · creatures **≤ ~3k** · hero / boss / suit-frames **≤ ~6k**.
- **The palette is the ontology** (the fiction rule made visible): **warm gold/amber = light (ours, true) ·
  cold corpse-green/blue = gloam (the deep's counterfeit) · lure-red = bait · white-hot = conversion.**
- **The readability law (binding, from the three reviews):**
  1. **Value first, hue second.** Every warm/cold distinction is *also* carried by luminance value, shape
     language, and **flicker-cadence** (steady = true, flicker = false — the load-bearing channel; hue is the
     garnish). This is the colorblind answer (gold-vs-green is a worst-case red-green pair).
  2. **Design the dark floor for the video encoder, not the OLED.** Bioluminescent ground-clutter density is
     the streamability dial; dark scenes must survive 6–8 Mbps without macroblocking. A separate **capture /
     photo grade** (lifted, saturated profile) ships for clips and screenshots.
  3. **Screenshot discipline.** Every promotional frame reads at **200 px** with a warm focal light AND a
     legible silhouette.

## The material decision (the solo-dev keystone)

**No per-asset texturing, ever.** This is the single most important production rule in the project.

- **One shared palette / gradient atlas** — Imphenzia-style: a single small texture of colour bands. UVs are
  *placed onto bands*, not unwrapped. Zero texture-painting skill required; perfect style coherence; batches
  hard.
- **Vertex-colour accents** for per-asset variation on top of the atlas.
- **Three master shaders — the whole rendering surface of the game:**
  1. **`Lit-Palette`** — statics (props, dressing, environment, station).
  2. **`Emissive-Gloam`** — parameterized warm/cold/lure emissive. **One shader is the entire palette rule:**
     its parameters (hue, **flicker-cadence**, intensity) are *both* the look *and* gameplay information
     (true-vs-false light). Every glow in the game is this shader.
  3. **`Skinned-Palette`** — deformation-aware (the Rukhanka-skinned creatures/suits). Replaces the current
     `AnimatedLitShader` role as the palette-atlas creature material.

**Every asset in the game shares ~3 materials.** Coherence, batching, and no per-asset UV/texture work — that
is the amortization that makes a one-person creature factory possible.

> ⚠ **Carry-over gotcha ([[material-property-body-flash-rukhanka]]):** a per-instance `URPMaterialPropertyBaseColor`
> tint only renders if the shader declares `_BaseColor` **Hybrid-Per-Instance** (ShaderGraph
> `overrideHLSLDeclaration:true` + `hlslDeclarationOverride:2`). The three master shaders must be authored
> Hybrid-Per-Instance if we want per-instance gloam-tint variants (a free variant axis — see A2 variant policy).

## Reference board

- **RoR2** — shape language, faceted low-poly, dynamic-light-first in dark ambient.
- **Dredge** — water mood, dread, the sea-as-atmosphere.
- **Hollow Knight** — value control in darkness (how to stay legible with almost no light).
- **Below** — the **cautionary** case: solo dread + screenshot-illegible darkness killed it. The readability
  law exists specifically against this failure.

## The style-proof scene — THE GATE (not yet built)

**One prop + one creature + one suit**, in-engine, under murk + dynamic lights, on the capture grade. Judged
three ways, all of which must pass:

1. **Full-size** — reads as *this game and no other*.
2. **At 200 px** — silhouette + warm focal light legible (screenshot-discipline rule).
3. **In grayscale** — value-first / flicker-cadence carries the true-vs-false read with hue removed.

**Locked before any mass production.** This gate + [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]] + the world-model
review ([[Lantern_World_Model_Spike]]) together are Phase 0's exit. Until this scene is approved, Workstream A
stays in A0 (no A1 pipeline proof, no A2 factory).

## Handoff to the deeper pass (A1 recipes)

The concrete recipe documents are **A1 work** (Phase 1), not A0: the **statics recipe** (Blender → export
units/scale → collider policy → entity baking → palette material) and the **skinned recipe** (rig → per-action
clips, Key All Bones, bake-to-pose → FBX → Rukhanka ingest → `Skinned-Palette` → prefab). Both build on the
project's proven animation pipeline ([[DR-022_Animation_Pipeline_Rukhanka_Synty]] / [[DR-023_Enemy_Animation_MonsterMash]]
+ the machine-local Blender recipe) and the **three rig families** (Drifter / Crawler / Strider). This doc is
the constitution; the recipes are the operating manuals.

## Related

- [[Identity_Lantern]] — the fiction the palette encodes (the readability law lives there too)
- [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]] — Workstream A (A0 → A1 → A2 → A3) gates
- [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]] — the adoption
- [[Synty_Asset_Inventory]] — placeholder quarry until custom assets land
- [[DR-022_Animation_Pipeline_Rukhanka_Synty]] — the skinned-material lineage `Skinned-Palette` inherits