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Author a Skinned Character Test Case

Scope

Section titled “Scope”

Scaffold an asset-generation test case for an organic character: one continuous skin bound to a model-invented skeleton, deforming smoothly across its joints, sculpted with the mc-skin, sn-skin, or dc-skin binary. Read Authoring a Skinned Character Test Case for the full procedure; Skinned cases is the authoritative schema.

A rigid machine that articulates about pivots, such as a tank or a mech, belongs in a mesh-animation or voxel-animation case. A character that never deforms belongs in a static mesh-model case.

Layout

Section titled “Layout”

A version lives at test-cases/asset-generation/<difficulty>/<slug>/<version>/. A version with runs recorded against it is frozen; revise a case by adding a new version.

test-cases/asset-generation/<difficulty>/<slug>/<version>/
  test-case.toml         # manifest: type, asset_kind, voxel, tool, output, model
  variants/              # one standalone TOML file per variant
  prompt.hbs             # rendered into the harness instruction; not seeded
  changelog.md           # required per-version entry; not seeded
  description.md         # site blurb; not seeded
  specs/brief.md         # the character and tool behavior; seeded

A run seeds the brief, <binary>.config.json, and a rig.json pre-populated with the required animations alone, with the skinning binary on PATH. Its --help is the operation contract. Core emits the single mesh.glb and the filled rig.json on render. The case declares no [[reference]] and carries no target mesh.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”
  1. Pick a catalog slug and the character to sculpt: a body whose motion is continuous skin deformation, achievable with the CSG primitives.
  2. Pick the asset_kind from the character’s surface: mc-skinned for low-poly, sn-skinned for smooth mid-fidelity, dc-skinned for sharp-edged and armored. It fixes [tool].binary to the matching -skin binary.
  3. Write specs/brief.md: the character, silhouette, orientation (+z forward, y up), the exact opaque #rrggbb palette, the required animations and how each reads as continuous-skin deformation, that the skeleton is the model’s to invent, and that render emits the geometry. Keep the brief self-contained.
  4. Write prompt.hbs. It renders in strict mode against {{variant.*}}, {{#each specs}}, {{workspace}}, {{time_limit_hours}}, and {{voxel.*}}. Point the model at the binary’s --help and state the hard requirements: sculpt and rig only through the tool, author every animation, and render before returning.
  5. Write test-case.toml: metadata (name, difficulty, tags), the required changelog, type = "asset-generation", asset_kind ("mc-skinned", "sn-skinned", or "dc-skinned"), and the variants list.
  6. Declare [voxel] for the field bounds: width, height (up), depth, and a background used as the preview clear color.
  7. Declare [tool] with the skinning binary and a preview, and [output] with an actions log. Both name single files. A skinned case is the animated kind that emits one whole-body mesh, so the {part} token is rejected.
  8. Declare [model] carrying [[model.animation]] entries by identity alone: a unique name, a loop flag, and an auto_play flag, where true means a continuous breathing idle. The skeleton, weights, period, and F-curves are the model’s.
  9. Declare the single overall [[domain]]. The character is judged as a whole against its brief on that one rating, so the case declares no [[review_item]] checklist, no [[reference]], no [build], and no [[check]].

Worked examples: siege-husk for mc-skinned, caldera-slag for sn-skinned, and sunfront-trooper for dc-skinned.

Validate

Section titled “Validate”

Run these for every variant.

Terminal window
npm run lint:specs
tcab prompt --test-case <slug> --version <version> --variant <variant>
tcab seed   --test-case <slug> --version <version> --variant <variant>

prompt catches strict-mode template and manifest errors, including a stray {part} token and a missing required table. seed writes the seeded repository under tmp/, where you confirm the brief, the tool config, and the pre-seeded rig.json are self-contained.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”