Mythic Masters: animation hill climb, rounds 7+ (from #3694) #3708

Score: 3.5/10 (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 #3694 (round 6, flight posture) and #3219 (rounds 1-5), both in PR #3693. Motion only: materials, lighting and effects are the graphics lane.

Where it stands

Round 5 made arms, fins and tails trail the body. Round 6 made winged bipeds fly chest down with their legs trailing; the flight-shot judge went 2 → 6. On bot-fight bursts the judges put the game at about 5-6 out of 10.

Next rounds, in order (the judges' top gaps)

1. Squash on impact. A struck body tilts back as a rigid plank and flushes, but never compresses, bends at the spine or rebounds. The white hit flash also hides the moment of contact.
2. Membranes that billow. Wings are stiff planks that hinge, folded edge-on most of the time. That takes 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). Sasabonsam's wing crumples into a shard pile in the flight close-up.
3. A flyer's forelimbs in flight. The arms hang straight down under a leaning body (Jersey Devil, Sasabonsam). Tuck them or trail them.
4. No clipping. Wind-ups still pass bodies into each other (Yeti into Hodag, Black Shuck into Wampus Cat).
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, cued on a wind-up and on a landed hit.
• With no flag, it shoots the art scenes (wings, contact, dragon) plus close-ups.
• --fly shoots the winged bipeds held in flight in the gallery, side on. A bot fight rarely catches one in the air.

For BEFORE, write main's src/beasts.ts (and any other files the round touches) into the working tree, shoot, then restore. Shots: docs/shots-2026-11-05-anim-r5/ and -r6/. A fresh judge scores BEFORE against NOW on the five points; report half its gain. Bot fights are random, so judges credit unrelated points with variance: check what the round actually changed.