procedural-terrain

name	procedural-terrain
description	Build the procedural ground in Blender — primitive surfaces (sand, water, grass), GN displacement for terrain shape, then tiled PBR materials via PATINA. Pastes a known-good template rather than composing GN nodes from scratch (sidesteps GN-API-drift).

Codex adaptation

Use the available Codex file and Blender MCP tools. In this migrated skill, $1 means world slug.

Build the procedural terrain for worlds/$1/ based on worlds/$1/plan.json.

The procedural-vs-generated split

This skill handles PROCEDURAL surfaces — flat or displaced Blender primitives that get tiled PBR materials. Objects (palms, chests, lanterns, log-stumps, boulders, flowers) come from generate-3d via Tripo P1.

Procedural surface candidates for this skill:

• Main sand ground plane (always)
• Water plane around the island (if plan.terrain.water.present)
• Small grass patches (if the reference has grass)
• Secondary islet ground plane (if the plan has a second island)

For each procedural surface: create the primitive in Blender → call generate-material skill to produce PBR via PATINA → apply.

Procedure

1. Read worlds/$1/plan.json. Extract:

   • plan.terrain.shape ("island" / "hills" / "flat" / "shoreline" / "crater")
   • plan.terrain.size_meters (e.g. [12, 12])
   • plan.terrain.water.present + plan.terrain.water.level
   • plan.style.palette (use index 0 for ground colour, index 1 for water colour)

2. Read the template at .claude/scripts/blender/procedural-terrain.py.

3. Substitute parameters at the top of the template:

   SIZE_X = <plan.terrain.size_meters[0]>
   SIZE_Y = <plan.terrain.size_meters[1]>
   SHAPE = "<plan.terrain.shape>"
   WATER_LEVEL = <plan.terrain.water.level or None>
   SAND_HEX = "<plan.style.palette[0]>"
   WATER_HEX = "<plan.style.palette[1]>"
   

4. Send to Blender via MCP by calling the execute_blender_code tool (from the blender MCP server) with the full substituted script. This creates the primitives — ground plane, optional water plane, optional secondary islet — with placeholder solid-colour materials.

5. Generate + apply PATINA materials. For each procedural surface created in step 4, invoke the generate-material skill:

   • sand (main ground) — always
   • water-shallow (water plane) — if plan.terrain.water.present
   • grass (grass patches) — if grass is in the plan
   • sand (secondary islet, can reuse the main sand material) — if a second island exists

   Each PATINA call is ~$0.08 at 1024px. Total PATINA spend per typical world = ~$0.16-0.24 for 2-3 distinct materials.

   After the maps are generated, paste the apply_patina_material(...) Python snippet (see generate-material/SKILL.md) into execute_blender_code to wire each map set onto the right object.

6. Take a baseline screenshot. Call get_viewport_screenshot(max_size=800) from the blender MCP server. Save the returned PNG to worlds/$1/iterations/000-terrain.png.

7. Inspect the screenshot. Read it back (it's a multimodal Image block). Confirm:

   • Ground is visible and oriented correctly
   • PATINA material applied — palette matches the reference (not pink/missing-texture default, not the placeholder solid colour)
   • Water plane is present if expected
   • Camera is looking at the scene (not into the void)

   If any check fails, run execute_blender_code with corrective Python and re-screenshot. If the PATINA material itself looks off (wrong palette, broken tile), call generate-material again with a tighter prompt or different seed (cap at 2 PATINA retries per surface).

   Hard cap: 3 corrective tries total before escalating to the user.

Hard rules — these are non-negotiable

• The GN terrain modifier MUST be named GN_Terrain and live in a group named Terrain_Setup with exposed inputs (Hill Height, Noise Scale, Edge Falloff).
• The displacement chain MUST be wrapped in a NodeFrame labelled "Displacement (noise + radial falloff)" — visible in the node editor for the on-camera reveal.
• These naming choices keep the GN setup legible — anyone opening the node editor can see the displacement chain and tweak the exposed parameters without spelunking.

Returns

• Path to the baseline screenshot
• A one-line summary of what was built (e.g. "island terrain 12×12, water at z=-0.05, sand #f2d790")