_TEMPLATE_BEING.md

assets/_TEMPLATE_BEING.md

Art bible — BEING SUBJECT

Status: AWAITING PICK. Board BRD_NNNN has not been picked, so nothing below is ratified.
The ratification write is a DIRECTOR-level apply and quotes the pick line verbatim
(REALM_DESIGN_PROGRAM.md §3.5, RATIFY). A subagent may create this file in AWAITING PICK and may
never flip it. Fields marked SET BY are waiting on the named panel or the named plate role.

This is the BEING form of the art bible — twelve fields against the place form's eleven

(_TEMPLATE.md). A being board is two panels, not three: Panel A is accurate, what the tradition or

the zoology says, and Panel B is enhanced (CONCEPT_ART_PROGRAM.md §2.2, lines 290-292). The plate

roles and authoring rules the fields below name are BOARDED, not yet landed, in

docs/pipeline_review/art_pipeline_reviews_2026-08-03/build_sufficiency_review.json, lane

character-creature, required_additions 0-9 — the closed plate_role vocabulary and the per-class

required-role sets are required_additions[17] and are NOT YET MINTED, so a SET BY line below names a

role that has no ratified vocabulary behind it yet. Columns are marked live or PROPOSED at the point

of use, and this file never reads a proposed column as a landed one.

Provenance

1. Silhouette law

SET BY Panel A's TURNAROUND SET — ortho_front, ortho_side, ortho_back, ortho_three_quarter, one

declared neutral pose, one camera height, flat even light, plain neutral background, identical

framing and subject occupancy. This is the design lock: the field that decides whether the being

reads as itself in pure black-on-white at encounter distance, and the artifact the modeller, the

rigger, the texture pass and the de-slop critic's relabel test all compare against.

The neutral pose is declared per morphology class and recorded — biped A-pose, quadruped standing

square, serpentine relaxed S, avian perched with wings half open, chimeric declares its own.

Behaviour, attack and phase poses are ADDITIONAL plates and are never the geometry driver, which is

exactly one plate per (canon_id, variant_key): three-quarter front, rig-legal, limbs clear of the

torso, no motion blur, no ambiguous ground contact, uniform background. The plate columns that make

that key checkable — geometry_driver, variant_axis, variant_value, identity_ref_plate_id,

view_conditioned_from, subject_pose_class — are PROPOSED, NOT YET MINTED (required_additions[16];

none of the six is in the live docs/art_boards/PLATES.csv header today), so the key is stated here

as doctrine and is not yet a query.

How the views are produced is RULED and is not this bible's to re-decide

(build/3d/characters/view_consistency/DIRECTOR_RULING_WQ0031_L1.json, THE_RULING_PER_CLASS): a

turnaround used as VERIFICATION is rendered from the mesh at declared angles and is never generated

as independent images; an authored multi-view set is same-framing front, back and side, full figure,

one framing class, conditioning the 3D engine's multi-image path; where only one plate exists, the

single rig-legal driver plate is the floor and the invented back is NAMED on the row rather than

synthesized. Independent sampling of a turnaround is a defect by construction.

2. Proportion canon

SET BY the registry row, before any plate. SCALE IS A NUMBER FIRST, quoted from the rule this field

exists to carry: "height_m is written on the registry row BEFORE the scale_figure plate is rendered;

the plate is rendered against it; disagreement is a regeneration, not a note"

(build_sufficiency_review.json, lane character-creature, required_additions[11]). A serpentine or

quadruped form carries its optional length_axis token beside the number, from the closed set

{body_length, wingspan}, written ONLY when the number measures something other than standing height —

an axis token beside a standing-height number is a reading error waiting to happen. The scale_figure

plate then

shows the subject beside a 1.75 m human silhouette at the same camera and lens, and the metre value

lives on the ROW, never only inside the image.

Everything else in the field is the proportion call itself — head-to-body ratio, limb-to-torso, the

one proportion that carries the character. Consumed by the capsule and convex collision hull matched

to the skeleton, the Decimate target at steam_deck_minimum, arena framing and the encounter camera.

This mirrors the place bible's meters_per_vertex discipline, which exists precisely so the art call

and the geometry budget cannot diverge.

3. Surface and material vocabulary

SET BY Panel A's material_closeup plate — hide, feather, scale, fabric, skin at macro. Material names

are mapped where possible to real material behaviour so the physics and cultural-authenticity critics

have something checkable, and they are the names field 5's costume pieces resolve into. Consumed by

the manual PBR derivation lane, which is where surface actually lands: no automated,

commercially-clean image-to-textured-PBR path exists today

(docs/translation/T99_Translation_AssetGen.md §3, lines 116-119), so this field is a work order for

a person and not a prompt.

4. Palette

SET BY Panel A's palette plate, refined by Panel B. Named colours with values AND the rule for where

each is allowed to appear — a palette without placement rules produces a roster that uses its

palettes the same way. Consumed by the texture pass and by mesh_tags.material at generation time.

Colour placement is this field's business and substance is field 3's; a register or care instruction

belongs in neither and goes to field 10. That split is live rather than tidy: the landed population

measured 215 being rows carrying register and care prose inside the material slot, where a prompt

composer reads a prohibition as a subject

(build/3d/characters/mesh_routing/MESH_ROUTING_DERIVATION_L2.json, finding F4).

5. Costume construction

SET BY the costume_callout plate — the outfit exploded into garment pieces, fastenings and wear

points, with material names that resolve into field 3. Not a costume drawing: a construction

breakdown, because a MetaHuman is sculpted against reference rather than prompted, and because the

character model is an undergarment base with equipment layered on top. Consumed by the MetaHuman

sculpt, the equipment and layered-garment lane, and the authenticity critic. Where a subject has more

than one outfit state, the states live in costume_set_ref against one mesh_id_ref, resolver-keyed

as decay_stage already is, and outfit_state is declared as a variant axis in field 9 — never as a

second bible. costume_set_ref is PROPOSED, NOT YET MINTED (required_additions[15]; it is not in the

live T0_Character_Index header today), so until it lands the states are enumerated here on this

face and nowhere else.

6. Expression range

SET BY the expression_sheet plate — six cells for named cast and companions: neutral, the subject's

signature affect, and the four states the dialogue and persona system actually drives. Consumed by

the MetaHuman sculpt, the cinematic participant performance, and the ambient-crowd mood shift the

runtime layer keys on integrity band. A subject with no face declares which channel carries affect —

ear, crest, tail, posture — or declares the field NOT APPLICABLE with the reason on this face, so an

empty field is never read as an unanswered one.

7. Motion grammar

SET BY Panel B's amplification, carried on the behaviour_pose plate. Weight, gait, and the idle tell —

the three things that make a being recognisable before it acts. The call answers to the subject's own

body plan and not to a style preference: a retarget chain whose target skeleton disagrees with the

target archetype's joint roster, segment count or per-joint range of motion is a FINDING, not a style

choice, and a humanoid-to-bird retarget that maps knee-to-knee produces a bird that walks like

nothing alive (docs/pipeline_review/tech_research/PIPE_ANIMATION_2026-07-29.md, lines 26-31).

Consumed by the animation lane's retarget profile and by the rig_notes overlay in field 12.

8. Telegraph grammar

SET BY the telegraph_pose plates, one per phase — the windup at its most readable moment, rendered

ALSO as pure black-on-white so the shape channel is an artifact rather than an aspiration. The phase

count is sized from the boss row's own phase_trigger and escalation_vector and is never a fixed

four; phase_state is one plate per phase beyond the first; hitzone_breakable is one plate per

hitzone_parts entry, showing the part intact and broken with its break_effect visible. Consumed

by the combat readability floor, by the deterministic silhouette-contrast measure that turns that

floor into arithmetic, and by the ability and VFX lane. A phase whose telegraph derivative is

indistinguishable from the previous phase's has failed this field, and it fails as a number.

9. Variant axes

One line per declared axis and what that axis CHANGES — geometry, texture, costume, or nothing but

palette. The plate-side vocabulary is age_stage, integrity_band, path_lock, outfit_state, rare_morph

and hollow_surface, carried as variant_axis and variant_value on the plate row; a character row

declares its own set in appearance_variant_axes from age_stage, integrity_band, path_lock,

gender_presentation and appearance_base. Each axis states whether it is parametric or authored, and

each variant_key carries exactly one geometry_driver.

All of that machinery is PROPOSED, NOT YET MINTED: appearance_variant_axes is

required_additions[15] and is absent from the live T0_Character_Index header; variant_axis and

variant_value are required_additions[16] and are absent from the live docs/art_boards/PLATES.csv

header. So until those columns land, this field is where the axes are declared, and the plate budget

is an entry on this face rather than a query.

10. The forbidden list

SET BY the board's NAMED VISUAL EXCLUSION block plus the de-slop critic's findings, written in the

may/ · may_not/ · must/ token grammar the live T0_Realm_Ruleset_Registry.care_duty_tokens

column already uses. Specific prohibitions, never a quality aspiration.

Two being-specific obligations land here rather than in a routing column. The BEING CARE ROUTE keys

Panel A's reference class on the subject's own care selectors — T0_Creature_Roster.combat_permission

PROTECTED, cultural_depiction_required TRUE, cultural_care_register, and the Familiar registry's

depiction_constraint prose — and it is calibrated BOTH ways, since a folklore being that is a canon

BOSS must not be routed to reverent-empty by a care flag. A subject canon rules referenced and never

rendered is stated here in those words rather than left to an empty cell. And the materialized-argument

class carries its own bound: a construct never wears a culture's sacred beings — the condemned-register

skin draws on judgment, ledger and mark imagery

(docs/translation/T99_Translation_AssetGen.md lines 87-96, D-MATARG-LOOK).

11. Citation appendix

Every source with its rights value. PROMOTION IS RIGHTS-GATED: an image moves from board to bible only

if its rights value is in the promotable set, and previz_only never promotes. SITE-LEVEL RIGHTS ARE

SEPARATE FROM IMAGE-LEVEL RIGHTS, and for a being the second field is the depiction question rather

than the capture one — a tradition's own account of what a being looks like carries its own permission

question, and image-level clearance never answers it. Rights values per plate live in

docs/art_boards/PLATES.csv.

12. Downstream consumers

era, one compact JSON object in that key order (docs/translation/T99_Translation_AssetGen.md

§4.1 lines 162-166; populated across 724 being rows by

build/3d/characters/mesh_routing/MESH_ROUTING_DERIVATION_L2.json). This bible's fields 1, 3, 4 and

10 are what a human reads when a sub-field is honestly empty; mesh_tags.style takes the four-value

T99:164 vocabulary and this file never coins a fifth.

special_case_by_case, derived from T99 §2's routing table at lines 77-96 and narrowed there

because a value no field selects is a value nobody can audit. The routing is not this bible's to

re-decide; the bible supplies the look the route executes.

(docs/pipeline_review/tech_research/PIPE_3D_2026-07-29.md line 110, the stack table's

auto-rigging row), and the rig_notes overlay on ortho_side marks joint intent (spine path on a

serpentine, limb segment count, whether the wings are arms). That the overlay is what stops UniRig

returning a rig nobody can retarget across the non-humanoid roster is the review's own assertion

(build_sufficiency_review.json, lane character-creature, required_additions[6]), not a claim the

stack table makes. On the metahuman side, T99 rules the ROUTE — NPCs are MetaHuman-first and

generative image-to-3D is the wrong tool for them

(docs/translation/T99_Translation_AssetGen.md lines 61-68 and 82) — while what the sculpt is OWED

is ruled elsewhere: a face reference at consistent lighting from at least front and profile, a

proportion and height call, skin, hair and eye values, and a costume construction breakdown, and

none of that is a portrait (build_sufficiency_review.json, lane character-creature,

what_build_needs, the HUMANS ARE NOT GENERATED entry; and

build/3d/characters/view_consistency/DIRECTOR_RULING_WQ0031_L1.json

THE_RULING_PER_CLASS.HUMAN_NPC_and_protagonist, "a same-framing FRONT + PROFILE reference set ...

never a portrait"). Fields 2 and 5 are where this bible pays that.

checked against, and the profile sits inside generation_prompt_hash alongside prompt text, seed,

checkpoint name and skeleton, so a profile change fires regeneration_required through the existing

trigger (docs/pipeline_review/tech_research/PIPE_ANIMATION_2026-07-29.md line 161).

against a reviewer's memory, and so the deterministic being measures (background uniformity on the

geometry_driver, subject occupancy band, silhouette contrast on every telegraph derivative,

cross-view collision inside an ortho set) read their expectations from a ratified surface.

Canon accounting (the gate face)

This bible is ENROLLED in gate canon_derivation in the commit it is created, with a

<subject>.coverage.json sidecar generated from the subject board's own coverage rows and never

hand-typed. Every id the bible's canon scope names is either covered or pending, and a pending id

carries its reason and the lane that owes it, disclosed here on the face.

Generated by harness/site/structure_site.py — the URL path is the repo path. review root