Track 2 of the A0 readability work. The operator wanted non-flat ground; the
walkable surface must stay flat, because the character controller is configured
for a plane (SnapToGround=false, gravity float3.zero) and enemies have no
pathfinding. Real elevation is a locomotion + navigation task, not an art one.
The kit therefore avoids the height band that breaks entirely:
SM_Seabed_Hollow_A 442 tris below plane no collider
SM_Seabed_Dunes_A 442 tris +/-0.4 crests no collider
SM_Seabed_Ridge_A 55 tris ~1.2 m rim placement
SM_Seabed_Outcrop_A 120 tris ~1.4 m rim placement
SM_Seabed_Shelf_A 96 tris ~1.4 m rim placement
1155 tris total, all far under the <=800/prop budget, faceted, one material.
Nothing sits at 0.3-0.6 m, which is the range that either clips the diver's legs
(no collider) or becomes a wall you cannot see over (collider). The three tall
pieces sit at the arena RIM outside the 16u wave ring, where the boundary
already blocks the player - so they read as silhouette with no subscene collider
work and zero nav risk.
Two art lessons, both corrected mid-build:
- First pass encoded relief as ALBEDO BANDING from the palette atlas. At
top-down, flat colour bands read as a printed pattern, not form: the hollow
looked like a bullseye and the ripple sheet like woven basketwork. The style
bible is explicit that the read is shape + light. Uniform albedo + real
geometry + faceted normals doing the shading.
- Cutting an organic outline by dropping whole quads gives stair-stepped
edges. Rebuilt in POLAR coordinates so the boundary follows R(theta) exactly.
In-engine: the palette grey read ~2x brighter than the seabed floor, so the
pieces looked like slabs laid on top. Ground pieces now share the floor's own
M_Staging_Seabed; rock pieces use a darker sibling M_Seabed_Rock (0.13,0.19,0.23)
so they read as the same ground family, a shade separated.
Exported per-piece so the Phase-2 pocket generator can place them individually
rather than inheriting a bespoke landscape.
304/304 EditMode green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
kronic
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