Mythic Masters: animation hill climb, rounds 6+ (from #3219) #3694

Score: 3/10 (target 9, on the owner's halved scale: agent judges halve their number, per the 2026-11-05 reset)

Carries the animation climb on from #3219 (rounds 1-5; round 5 is PR #3693, arms, fins and tails that trail the body). Motion only: materials, lighting and effects are the graphics lane.

Where it stands

Round 5's judge (BEFORE vs NOW --combat bursts): 4 → 5 out of 10. Hanging parts went from 4 to 5, the meet from 5 to 6, and grounded locomotion from 5 to 5.5. Membranes and flight barely moved: they rose only by bot-fight variance, since the round didn't touch them.

Next rounds, in order (the judge's top gaps)

1. Flight posture. The flyer (Jersey Devil) hangs upright like a lifted biped, legs down. Pitch the torso into the direction of flight and dip at the bottom of each stroke.
2. Membranes that billow. Spread wings still read as rigid plates. That needs more bones in the wing (a finger fan from blender/beast.py) or a vertex sag between bones. Every foot must stay a rig tip (bun run beasts).
3. Squash on impact, and no clipping. A struck body tilts and flushes but never compresses or rebounds visibly. Two wind-ups still pass bodies into each other (Yeti into Hodag, Black Shuck into Wampus Cat).
4. A heavy tail that moves in a fight. Hodag's tail now swings about 0.6 m on a quick turn in the puppet harness, but it reads as a straight spike in fight bursts. Give it a gait sway and a strike whip, not only lag.
5. Grounded locomotion. Body bob and roll tied to each footfall instead of a sine. Rougarou often floats with one foot down or none.
6. The open-world walker's gait. Not judged yet: the walker is too small in frame. A closer camera for a harness shot first.

How the shots are taken

bun scripts/burst-shots.ts <dir> <prefix> --combat runs one fight per archetype, with bursts cued on a wind-up and on a landed hit, 4 frames 0.2 s apart. For BEFORE, check main's src/beasts.ts and src/secondary.ts into the working tree, shoot, then restore. Round 5's shots are in apps/mythic-masters/docs/shots-2026-11-05-anim-r5/, and earlier rounds' in docs/shots-2026-11-01-anim/. A fresh judge scores BEFORE against NOW on the five points; report half its number.