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Author a Skinned Character Test Case

Scaffold a new asset-generation test case that asks a model to sculpt an organic character — one continuous skin bound to a model-invented skeleton, deforming smoothly across its joints — with a skinning binary (mc-skin, sn-skin, or dc-skin) to match a written brief. The asset_kind — one of mc-skinned (low-poly), sn-skinned (smooth mid-fidelity), or dc-skinned (sharp-edged, armored) — is picked by the character’s surface. This is the short version; Authoring a Skinned Character Test Case covers it in full, and Manifests is the authoritative schema.

A rigid machine that articulates about pivots (a tank, a mech) is a sibling mesh-animation or voxel-animation case instead. There is no static skinned kind — a character that never deforms is a static mesh-model case.

Layout

Section titled “Layout”

A version lives at test-cases/<type>/<difficulty>/<slug>/<version>/ and is immutable once runs reference it — revise by adding a new version, not by editing a published one.

test-cases/<type>/<difficulty>/<slug>/<version>/
  test-case.toml         # manifest: type, asset_kind, voxel, tool, output, model, the overall domain
  variants/              # one standalone TOML file per variant (listed in `variants`)
  prompt.hbs             # rendered into the harness instruction (NOT seeded)
  specs/brief.md         # the character + how the tool behaves — SEEDED

A run receives only the seeded brief, the binary on PATH (its --help is the ops contract), a seeded mc-skin.config.json, and a rig.json pre-populated with the required animations alone. There is no target mesh and no operations schema.

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. Worked examples: siege-husk (mc-skinned), caldera-slag (sn-skinned), sunfront-trooper (dc-skinned).
  2. Write specs/brief.md: the character, silhouette, orientation (+z forward, y up), the exact opaque #rrggbb palette (no alpha), 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 it self-contained.
  3. Write prompt.hbs using only the documented template variables ({{variant.*}}, {{#each specs}}) — it renders in strict mode — pointing the model at the binary’s --help and stating the hard requirements (sculpt/rig only through the tool; author every animation; render before returning).
  4. Write test-case.toml: metadata (name, difficulty, tags), type = "asset-generation", asset_kind ("mc-skinned" / "sn-skinned" / "dc-skinned"), a variants list, the [voxel] field bounds (width, height up, depth, background = the preview clear color only), and [tool] (binary, preview) + [output] (actions) — both single files with NO {part} token (the one animated kind that does not template by part).
  5. Under [model], declare only [[model.animation]] entries by identity alone — a unique name, a loop flag (default true), and auto_play (default false; true = a continuous breathing idle). Declare no bones, joints, weights, period, or keyframes; the model invents the skeleton and authors F-curves at run time. The skinned mesh.glb + rig.json are core-emitted automatically — never named here. There is no [[reference]], no [build], and no [[check]].

Validate

Section titled “Validate”
Terminal window
tcab prompt --test-case <slug> --version <version> --variant <variant>
tcab seed   --test-case <slug> --version <version> --variant <variant>

For every variant, render the prompt (catching strict-mode template errors, a stray {part} token, or a missing required table) and inspect the seeded repository (brief + mc-skin.config.json + the rig.json) to confirm it is self-contained.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”