Mythic Masters: graphics hill climb rounds 5+ (from 6.0 toward 9) #3217

The graphics lane of the #2943 hill climb ran rounds 1-4 (arena set dressing, hide detail, floors, sky and light). After round 4 a fresh judge scored it 6.0/10, up from 4.4. Part of #2943.

These are the next graphics rounds, in the judge's order. Looks only: the animation lane owns bones and motion, and src/director.ts, the cinema overlay and src/fx.ts belong to other work.

1. Hides read as noise on plastic. The detail in src/hide.ts needs to sit on the form. Try fur shell or sheen with a lighter colour at the tips, and lower-frequency scale rows. The Troll looks like grainy static: check its frost field look (effects.ts) stacked with the fur pattern, plus its glassy rim.
2. Creatures aren't lit by the scene. They need ground bounce in the arena's ground colour, stronger contact shadows, and softer selection rings with a hard edge only at the rim.
3. Water and arena edges. The lake is a flat cyan slab with a hard edge. It needs a shoreline blend, depth colour and a moving sheen. The rim torus and the bank strip need detail.
4. Grey skies and grading. The stadium and pines skies are still flat grey and washed out. Each skin needs a sky palette with a stronger sun, depth fog tinted per skin, and a light colour grade per arena.
5. Mixed low-poly styles. The flat-shaded blocky broadleaf trees and rocks from the shared scenery set (skate-tech-park/public/models/scenery-mid.glb) clash with the smooth beasts. Try smooth normals or softer foliage. The desert's pebbles read as leopard spots, so cut their number or contrast.
6. Stadium crowd. It reads as a wall of pixel dots. Use bigger, sparser people with some shading, or a texture for the far rows.

Shots and the judge's notes are on the round 1-4 PR, in apps/mythic-masters/docs/shots-2026-11-01-gfx/.