KILN

Changelog

All notable changes to KILN. Format: Keep a Changelog; versions: SemVer (any change to the notation, settings, manifest or meshes is at least a minor bump before 1.0).

Unreleased

[0.13.0] - 2026-10-29

Issues #15, #16, #18, #19, #20, #21, #23, #26, #27 and #64: terrains, foliage scattering, CC0 pack mirroring, Blender imports, clips on any skeleton, an opt-in Godot BoneMap, a richer toon look kit, hair under helmets, engine import notes and a cross-machine measurement. Everything new is opt-in: existing models build unchanged.

Added

  • Terrains (#15): a terrain: model of height shapes (hill, ridge, plateau, noise, path) blended in order, with up to 4 palette-colour splat layers driven by slope, height, path distance and noise rules. kiln build writes chunked glbs (32 m chunks) with LODs and skirts, a splat map PNG and a Godot scene with a splat shader and an inline HeightMapShape3D. Design point 256 x 256 m at 0.5 m cells. kiln.terrain.load gives height, normal, slope and splat queries. Lint W116/W117, kiln preview, --verify-godot checks.
  • Foliage scattering (#16): a scatter: model kind places models (and variants) over a terrain, a model’s top surface or a flat area at build time (density, spacing, scale/yaw/tilt jitter, slope/height/noise/splat/path rules, tint jitter), pre-rolled with random.Random(seed) into <name>.scatter.json and a Godot scene of MultiMeshInstance3Ds per entry, model and chunk. Lint E015/W118/W119, kiln preview, --verify-godot checks.
  • CC0 packs (#19): kiln pack list/add/search/import. Recipes for Kenney, KayKit and Quaternius packs (archive sha256 pinned, CC0 checked) mirror into a per-user cache (~/.cache/kiln/packs, KILN_PACK_CACHE); search uses names, tags and an index of triangles and size, with --json and a --lineup sheet. pack import records every copied file in kiln.lock; a changed hash or a non-CC0 entry fails the build (E014), a missing file warns (W115), and credits name the pack. Only kiln pack add uses the network. MCP: pack_list, pack_search, pack_import.
  • Blender imports (#20): .fbx, .blend and .obj import through the blender binary (Blender 4.x on PATH or BLENDER=) as a subprocess, then take the glb path. kiln import writes imports/<stem>.glb; files named directly in a model convert into .kiln-cache/blender/. kiln doctor reports Blender.
  • godot_bonemap = true in kiln.toml (#21, default false): humanoids get models/<name>.bonemap.tres (a BoneMap on SkeletonProfileHumanoid) set in their glb’s .import, so Godot retargets humanoid clips onto them. Godot then renames the skeleton’s bones and node, so game code naming them must change; turning it off restores the files.
  • Toon look keys (#26): toon_softness, toon_shadow_color, toon_specular, toon_shadows = "band", outline_space = "pixels" and outline_color = "darken". Previews follow them (except banded cast shadows: the software renderer has none). Defaults are today’s look. --verify-godot also fails on shader errors.
  • Hair under helmets (#23): rig: { hair: { parent: head, revealed: [helmet], fold: true } } on a model makes the library heads’ scalp hair its own piece, hidden until the helmet comes off, and fits the helmet to the skull. New rig key fold. Without it every library combo builds as before.
  • Clips on any skeleton (#64): skeleton: { map: {...}, root_motion: <joint> } retargets imported clips onto non-humanoid skeletons (bone -> clip joint, optional child to aim). Unmapped bones follow their parent; unmapped joints are ignored; no root_motion means no root translation.
  • docs/engines.md: notes for importing KILN output into Unity, Unreal, Bevy, three.js and Defold (#18).
  • A non-failing CI workflow builds the demo on x86-64 Linux, arm64 Linux and arm64 macOS and reports the differences (#27; tools/compare_builds.py).

Changed

  • W113 skips a part hidden by the shell it pokes through (#23).

0.12.0 - 2026-10-28

Issues #66, #67, #70, #71 and #72: hard-surface and text fixes (E013 cracks and crowded edges, an E009 crash, a hang).

Fixed

  • Bevelled extrudes no longer crack where a bar is narrower than twice the bevel (text with overlapping contours, such as a heavy serif S, and plain path:/points outlines alike): rings that would fold have their insets lowered just around the fold (#66). Bevelled outlines that folded before change there; others are unchanged.
  • Interlocked hard parts (chain links with small turns) no longer fail E013 with faces back to back: CSG slivers thinner than the weld whose outline folds over itself are dropped (#67).
  • A hard part beside loose hard links no longer fails with E009 “max() iterable argument is empty”: a flat patch with no outline is kept as it is (#70).
  • Text glyphs drawn as one self-crossing contour (Cinzel’s 3 and 8) are filled nonzero like overlapping contours, so they bevel without cracks (#71). Such glyphs change, bevelled or not.
  • Glyphs whose serif bars abut their strokes (Cinzel’s X) fill as one piece and bevel without hanging (#72).

0.11.0 - 2026-10-27

Issues #31, #57, #60 and #61: effect previews show fade, the floor and chosen times; fitted shells no longer grow walls inside their target; two E013 (non-manifold) failures fixed.

Added

  • kiln preview <model> --effect --at 0,0.1,0.25,0.5,1 (seconds) gives a contact sheet at those times instead of 8 evenly spaced frames (MCP preview: at, with which='effect'). Effect previews draw each piece’s fade as ordered dithering, and an effect with a floor gets the plane drawn as a thin grid (#31). Built output is unchanged.

Fixed

  • Two hard parts (a sphere and an aimed cone, a flared cone through a chamfered box) no longer fail E013 with two zero-area faces back to back: points the CSG leaves a hair off an edge two flat patches share now count as straight in both patches (#60). Hard-part meshes can change where this happened.
  • Smooth models with blended parts of different colours no longer fail E013 with crowded edges at a colour border: vertices the simplifier puts exactly onto a border vertex are joined before projecting and relaxing (#61). Smooth meshes can change where this happened.
  • Shells fitted to a CC0 mesh (fit_to, fit: target) no longer grow walls inside the target around its inner pieces: the target’s distance is signed per connected piece (angle-weighted pseudo-normals, min over pieces) and points enclosed by a piece read inside (#57). Such shells change; cached ones rebuild.

0.10.1 - 2026-10-26

Fixed

  • Atlas palette textures (and clip carriers) get KILN’s Godot .import settings whenever the output is inside a Godot project, not only with export = ["godot"]: a game that loads the glbs itself no longer gets VRAM-compressed, blurred palette cells (#56).

0.10.0 - 2026-10-26

Issues #22-#25 and #50: union: per_bone for rigid skins, manifold meshes on thin parts, clean shell and sharp rims, template library fixes, adjustable baked AO, and attachments checked on their bone in Godot.

Added

  • kiln build --verify-godot hangs every attachment fitted to a CC0 character (fit_to) on its bone of a copy of that character (BoneAttachment3D) and checks it lands where it was made (#22).
  • atlas_ao takes a strength 0..1 as well as true (0.65, unchanged): the darkest corner’s colour is x (1 - strength); the manifest’s atlas gives it as ao_strength (#24).
  • union: per_bone on a rigid-skinned model (#50): each bone’s parts are meshed as their own closed surface and neighbouring bones overlap instead of being cut where they meet, so turning a joint (animations, ragdolls) can’t tear the mesh, with or without merge_rigid. Default whole (unchanged meshes). W103 counts the bones’ pieces as joined where they touch. per_bone on a soft or static skin is E007.

Fixed

  • Template library (#23): heads have a neck reaching into the collar, so a helmet no longer leaves the head a separate piece (W103) on some grids; helmet_great reaches from the shoulders to above every hairstyle (hair poked through its top) and helmet_crown is a ring open at both ends (its closed bottom crossed the head); body_big’s collar sits on its chest instead of inside it and its hidden spine capsule is gone (W101).
  • Thin soft parts and narrow gaps no longer pinch (#25): dual contouring gives a cell one vertex per sheet of the surface crossing it (both sides of a wall thinner than a cell used to share one: edges with four faces), and where decimation joins the two sides of a thin part the vertex is split back into one per side. E013 now also reports edges with more than two faces and points where two sheets touch, not only open edges.
  • Smooth shells shade cleanly at their rims (#25): a crisp corner’s normal is sampled just off its face, so it no longer picks up the rim’s normal (dark wedges along helmet and bowl rims).
  • Thin sharp rims (a cone roof overhanging its tower) reach their edge instead of coming out ragged (#25): crossing points are found on the surface rather than interpolated linearly, and a best-fit point just beyond its cell is kept where it lies on the surface.

0.9.0 - 2026-10-21

Issues #28-#37: font text that holds together (nonzero fill, variable fonts, thin bevels), effect floors, gib pieces, mixed loadouts on shared clips, retarget adjustments, and preview fixes.

Added

  • font_axes: { wght: 900 } on text extrudes picks a variable font’s instance (any axis), so no pre-instanced copy of the font is needed (#29).
  • Effect floor: y: debris bounces (bounce, friction per emitter) and settles (settle) on it instead of falling through; every floor hit is rolled into the effect JSON (hits: age, position, velocity), so players and preview --effect match (#31).
  • Imported (retargeted) animations take retarget: { keep: { joint: share }, offset: { joint: [x, y, z] } }: damp a joint’s turn away from rest (base names cover both sides) and add a fixed turn, for clips made for another body type (#34).
  • gib: true | [ids] on a rig entry: kiln build also writes models/<name>.gib.<id>.glb, the part (and what hangs from it) as one closed static piece in the model’s frame, for parts that come off; manifest gibs (#35).

Changed

  • animation_library no longer needs exactly the same part ids: every id the carrier’s clips move must be in the model, other ids may differ (mixed loadouts: helmet, hat, shield follow their parents) (#33).

Fixed

  • bevel/chamfer (and a shrinking offset) on an extrude whose outline has sections thinner than about twice the bevel (font serifs, hairlines) no longer cracks (E013): the inset is limited per vertex to what fits there (#28).
  • E013 names the colour of a crack on a hex-coloured part instead of an empty name (#28).
  • Text extrudes fill glyphs by the nonzero rule, like font renderers: overlapping contours (static instances of variable fonts, many hand-made fonts) join instead of being cut out, so letters no longer fall apart (W103), mesh slowly or crack with bevels. Fonts without overlaps give the same outlines as before; SVG path: stays even-odd (#29).
  • kiln build removes decal textures Godot extracted from a glb (models/<name>_decal<N>_<hex>.png and its .import) once no glb embeds that image any more (the colour changed, or the model is gone) (#32).
  • kiln preview --vs counts surfaces and materials as kiln build writes them, with atlas on too (#36).
  • Previews (turntable, --closeup, --pose, lineup, gallery, --vs) leave out revealed parts, as the exported scenes do; --detach shows a part’s cap once it’s taken off (#37).

0.8.0 - 2026-10-21

LOOSE report 44-58, now GitHub issues #1-#14: shared clips, merged rigid skins, revealed parts, Godot import settings, partial builds, and E013 crack fixes. Hard-surface and humanoid output changes (meshes, pivots).

Added

  • revealed: [ids] on a rig entry (#3): a part shown only once one of those parts is gone (stump caps). It is its own piece, hidden by KILN’s .tscn scenes, marked kiln_revealed_by in the glb and revealed_by in the manifest; --verify-godot checks it starts hidden.
  • merge_rigid = true in kiln.toml (#9): a rigid skin is exported as one skinned mesh, every vertex 100% on its part’s bone (rigid look, one draw call instead of one per id); separate parts stay their own nodes. Hide a part by scaling its bone to 0. Manifest: merged_rigid.
  • Shared clips (#5): animations_only: true makes a model a clip carrier; animation_library: <carrier> on another model plays its animations (same part ids: E008; joints over 1 cm away from the carrier’s: W114) and its glb carries no clips. Manifest: animation_library, animations_only. With “godot” the carrier is imported as an AnimationLibrary (no .tscn); --verify-godot checks it.
  • Godot import settings (#14): with “godot”, palette atlas textures get .import settings (lossless, no mipmaps, no VRAM compression on first 3D use) and clip carriers the animation_library importer; what Godot adds later is kept. --verify-godot imports with them.
  • node_prefix: Knight_ on a model: mesh nodes are Knight_<id> children of their parts’ nodes (a soft skin’s mesh is Knight_mesh); bones and animations keep the part ids. Manifest: node_prefix, mesh_node per part (#7).
  • Animation names may use capitals (Idle_A: imported clips keep their library names); names differing only in case are E008 (#4).
  • kiln build <models> (MCP build models): builds only those; the other models keep what the last build wrote, so one broken model doesn’t block the rest (#13).
  • kiln preview --vs <ref.glb> metrics for restyles (#8): band_iou/band_ious (silhouette IoU per body band, each band normalised; head/torso/legs for humanoids against a rigged reference, else thirds), mass/mass_ref/ mass_ratio (visual mass), screen_px; the sheet gains a row at 30 m and 60 m (60 degree FOV, 1080 px screen).

Fixed

  • Default skeleton: humanoid pivots sit on the joints: a capsule (cylinder, cone, tube) limb pivots at its axis end, not the top of its rounded box (upper legs were 8 cm above the hip, upper arms at the top of a shoulder ball); hands, feet and toes where the limb above them ends (wrist, ankle; feet were at the heel) (#6).
  • Hard-surface CSG cracked (E013) where near-coplanar facets of several parts meet (a faceted skull, jaw and hair): each union, cut and intersect built its BSP trees from only the polygons near the other solid. The trees are now built from whole solids; only the nearby polygons are clipped (#2).
  • Soft parts blended at one spot (a straw tuft of capsules) bulge out of their boxes by up to a quarter of the blend per join; where that left the sampling grid, the mesh had a hole (E013). The grid grows on any side the surface reaches (#11).
  • Bands and stripes (model space) on hard parts are cut along their border planes on the exact faces, without refining the mesh first: three bands on a stepped hard lathe went from 30x the budget to its cuts (#12). A colour border through a vertex no longer leaves zero-area slivers there.
  • E013 lists each crack with its place and parts (up to five), not one centroid of all of them (#10).
  • Hard lathe parts take shell:, and open: -y/+y on a lathe cuts just its end wall (the profile sits anywhere on its axis; before, it cut at local y = 0): hollow hard helmets with a visible rim (#1). Hard parts no longer get W102 (thinner than the mesh resolution): they’re exact polygons.

0.7.1 - 2026-10-21

Added

  • The skill asks agents to report what got in their way (crashes, misleading messages, workarounds, missing features) as GitHub issues at https://github.com/lukasgolino/KILN/issues: a minimal-repro draft, a duplicate check, and filing only once approved. .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/agent-report.md and the agent-report label. Run kiln skill install to update a project’s copy of the skill.

Fixed

  • Hard-surface planar merge no longer crashes (KeyError in _outline_points) on a patch whose outline doesn’t close (its edges only meet other patches’ at T-points); such a patch keeps all its points (LOOSE #45).

0.7.0 - 2026-10-21

Effects and font text (LOOSE #41, #26).

Added

  • effect: on models (LOOSE #41): emitters throw other models out with velocity/burst, gravity, drag and spin, with scale/heat/fade envelopes over life. kiln build writes models/<name>.effect.json (manifest effect) with every particle rolled from the seed and the motion formula; kiln preview <model> --effect (MCP preview which=effect) plays it out. E011 when an emitted model doesn’t exist.
  • Extrude text: "OPEN" in font: fonts/sign.ttf (.ttf/.otf) with text_size, text_align, letter_spacing, line_spacing (LOOSE #26): glyph outlines from the font (counters are holes); no kerning or shaping.
  • Dependency: fonttools.

Changed

  • Build cache keys include extrude outlines (a font file’s edits rebuild); BUILDER_VERSION 12.

0.6.0 - 2026-10-21

LOOSE backlog: text outlines, holes, UVs, origins, per-vertex numbers, aim, pattern lists, rim light, bloom.

Changed

  • Extrude outlines measure only the edges that can be nearest to each point (tiles of points, bounded by their centre’s nearest edge): same distances, several times faster on long outlines (LOOSE #31).
  • W106 accepts a mesh up to 1.5 cells above the shapes’ own bottom when that is on y = 0 (rounded extrudes at coarse resolution, LOOSE #33), and skips models with an explicit origin.

Added

  • [look] rim_light, rim_light_color, rim_light_power (LOOSE #34): a fresnel rim added to every surface, a blend-add next pass in Godot scenes (only written for styles that set it) and in previews.
  • Previews bloom emissive materials when the style’s look has glow (as Godot’s environment glow does; LOOSE #42).
  • origin: base | center | [x, y, z] on models (LOOSE #40): the exported glb’s origin (the root node carries the shift; LODs share the full model’s); manifest origin.
  • uv: cylindrical | spherical | box | along on parts (LOOSE #39): projected texture coordinates in the part’s own frame, TEXCOORD_0 (TEXCOORD_1 when the atlas or a decal uses the first); manifest uv. kiln.api.part(uv=...).
  • aim: [from, to] (or { from, to, roll }) on every shape (LOOSE #29): its y axis along the line, halfway between the points, height = the distance when not given.
  • pattern: takes a list (painted in order, each over the last) and frame: part (axes in the part’s own frame, following rotate/aim) (LOOSE #30); ring arrays turn around any direction [x, y, z] (LOOSE #29).
  • attr: { name: number } on parts (LOOSE #38): custom glTF attributes _NAME per vertex; the first name also in COLOR_0’s alpha (what Godot imports); manifest attributes.
  • extrude: { path: "<SVG path data>" } (LOOSE #26): subpaths flattened to outlines (curves within path_tolerance), even-odd counters and islands, path_scale; hard extrudes add islands and cut counters.
  • extrude takes holes (outlines cut through, rounded with the rest; LOOSE #27) and offset (grow or shrink the outline; LOOSE #28).

0.5.0 - 2026-10-21

CC0 parity, second half: palette atlas (M9), humanoids and clip retargeting (M5), attachments for CC0 characters (M6), the template library (M4).

Added

  • Palette atlas (M9): atlas = true (kiln.toml) gives every model one material: colours, roughness/metal, glow (and Godot rim light) live in small palette textures next to the glb (<name>.palette.png, .material.png, .glow.png, .rim.png), faces’ UVs point at their colour’s cell. 1 surface per mesh, 2 with a decal (the demo knight: 2 meshes, 1 material, instead of 11 surfaces and 10 materials).
  • Variants under atlas are texture swaps (<name>.<variant>.palette.png): same mesh, and the Godot variant scene is the base glb with the variant’s palette. Manifest atlas (textures, cells with colour, preset, uv and pixel) and variant palette/glow.
  • atlas_ao = true: ambient occlusion baked into the vertex colours (COLOR_0, a multiplier), from the distance field.
  • kiln build --verify-godot checks that atlas models sample their palette texture.
  • Humanoids (M5): skeleton: humanoid (parts named after standard joints; default parents, pivots and soft skin; manifest humanoid maps joints to KayKit, Mixamo and Godot SkeletonProfileHumanoid names) and imported animations { import: <clips.glb>, clip: <name>, fps, loop, speed } retargeted at build time from CC0 clip libraries such as KayKit Character Animations (Rig_Medium); manifest animations name their clip.
  • Attachments for CC0 characters (M6): fit_to: { file, bone, meshes } and fit: { to: target, gap } wrap a shell around the character’s own mesh (an exact distance to its triangles); the glb is exported in the bone’s space, manifest attach; W113 when it sinks into the character; kiln preview --fit.
  • Template library (M4): 3 bodies, 6 heads, 6 helmets and 5 armour pieces in the package (kiln library, preview in docs/templates.png), combined with extends: [a, b, ...] (a list; project templates of the same name win) or kiln new model <name> --extends a,b,c; library palette people. cut: <id> cuts only that id; fit takes a list of ids; fitted shells are their own mesh pieces; templates may be partial (rig and fit names another template brings).

Fixed

  • vertex_colors = true: every surface carries COLOR_0, glow ones (which keep a material per colour) included, so rigged glowing models get vertex colours too (LOOSE 36).
  • kiln.api.part() sorts loose, hard, bevel, chamfer, segments, fit and keep into the part (LOOSE 32, 43).

0.4.0 - 2026-10-21

Toward CC0 parity (from the LOOSE! dogfooding report, items 23-25).

Added

  • Hard surface (M2): parts made as exact polygons with designed facets and crisp creases, joined by exact CSG. A part is hard with sides: N (cylinder, cone, lathe, torus; sphere, ellipsoid, capsule, tube when hard), chamfer, bevel + segments, blend: none or hard: true; style [shape] hard_surface = auto | always | never and hard_sides (low_poly: always, 8). sides also shapes the smooth field (an octagonal prism). The demo trebuchet in low_poly is 908 triangles with octagonal wheels.
  • shell: { thickness, side: in | both, open: -y }: a wall inside the surface with one side open, showing its rim.
  • Rig under: { color, material, gap } on a separate part: paints what it covers (hair under a helmet).
  • fit: { to: <id>, gap } on a shell part (M3): the wall wraps those parts’ surface wherever the part’s own shape reaches, so a helmet encloses the head down to the cheeks instead of perching on it.
  • W113: a part pokes through another part’s shell (eyes through a visor slot, a head through a helmet).
  • keep: true (M8): the part is its own small mesh (on a finer grid if it’s small) that every LOD keeps. Crisp parts under 2% of the model’s size are kept anyway (rivets, pupils, studs; keep: false opts out).
  • Hardware parts (M8): rivets, band (with fit: round an earlier part’s surface), planks, bolt, slit; each expands into ordinary (hard) parts.
  • kiln preview <model> --detach (and the MCP preview tool’s detach): each separate part off in turn.
  • E013: the built mesh has open edges (cracks).
  • Reference comparison (M7): kiln preview <model> --vs <ref.glb|ref.gltf> [--ref-height M] renders the model and a reference mesh at one scale in paired turntable rows, head-region closeups and per-view silhouette differences, with metrics (printed and under compare in --json): silhouette IoU over 8 views, triangles and their ratio, surfaces, materials, colours, facet regularity and open edges of both. --vs without a path still shows the inspiration images. The MCP preview tool takes reference and ref_height with which: "vs".
  • Skill: a “match a reference” workflow (iterate until the metrics are inside the agreed thresholds).

Fixed

  • Cracks at colour borders (LOOSE 23: 36 open edges on a footman; the demo knight had 48): cutting a border split only one side of an edge, leaving T-junctions. Every demo model is now closed.
  • Zero-volume fins (pairs of opposite faces) that decimation could leave on thin parts are removed.
  • Smooth shading streaked across flat faces next to crisp edges (a cylinder’s cap): the crease test compared the field’s normal on the edge (the bisector) with the full sharp_angle instead of half of it.
  • W102 and thin-part protection use a shell’s wall thickness.
  • The preview renderer crashed when a batch of triangles covered no pixel centre (close framings).

0.3.0 - 2026-10-20

From the LOOSE! dogfooding report (items 1-22).

Added

  • Model families: template: true models are bases; extends: <base> inherits parts (base first, minus remove: [ids]), rig, animations and variants (merged by name) and every other field except identity. E012.
  • loose: true on a part: it may float (flames, bees, rubble) without W103.
  • An animation can have a cycle and poses together: poses repeat over the cycle’s frames and override it per part.
  • Rig meta takes flat lists (points such as seat: [0, 1.56, 0]).
  • Manifest parts: aabb (the part’s box in model space, rest pose) and node_path.
  • variant_glbs = false (kiln.toml): no glb per variant; each variant is a Godot scene recolouring the base glb, and every variant (with or without glbs) gets a godot_scene in the manifest.
  • W111 (a part lost when reducing to the triangle budget) and W112 (a LOD well above its target, from kiln build).
  • kiln init inside a Godot project writes .gdignore.
  • Rig sockets: { name: [x, y, z] }: named points that become child nodes moving with the part (BoneAttachment3D markers in Godot), with position and offset in the manifest (report 22).
  • Manifest animations: start, the parts the first frame moves (report 22).
  • vertex_colors = true (kiln.toml): colours in the vertices, one surface per material preset: far fewer draw calls for crowds (report 19).
  • Lint meshes models in parallel processes (KILN_JOBS, default every core).

Changed

  • KILN no longer depends on PAGAN: the palette format, findings, YAML loader, OKLab colours and glTF writer are vendored (kiln.vendor, from PAGAN v0.9.0), so a game can pin any PAGAN version next to KILN.
  • separate: true parts are meshed on their own (a closed mesh, not fused into the body); they don’t count for W103.
  • W101 is judged on the full-detail mesh, not the decimated one.
  • --verify-godot and preview --engine run in a throwaway Godot project holding a copy of the output, so nothing else in the game’s project is imported or rewritten.
  • glTF material names end in #rrggbb (the colour), which variant scenes recolour by.
  • The .tscn style script shares its materials between instances (was: a copy per instance) and leaves surface overrides the game set before add_child alone (report 18).
  • soft_toy materials reflect less: metal 0.35 metallic / 0.55 roughness, gold 0.5 / 0.45, skin roughness 0.8; low_poly gold 0.5 metallic (report 21).
  • Meshing at tight budgets (characters with many colours, big models): each piece is first decimated freely to 3x the budget (triangles go where the shape needs them: wheels stay round), then colour borders are cut into it and kept. Borders are thinned and the mesh decimated in turns (a full-detail border can’t be thinned until the surface around it is coarser), border tolerance follows the budget’s triangle size, the simplifier runs again while it still helps (it stopped early on flat brims), and parts thinner than two budget-sized triangles keep their outline. Body pieces and separate parts are decimated together, each kept on its own surface. Rounder shapes than 0.2.0 at the same budget (LOOSE’s peasant: boots, hands, ears and nose kept at 5000 triangles).
  • Dual contouring stores only the cells on the surface (memory: was a 3x3 matrix per grid cell) and moves vertices whose triangles fold back to their cell’s centre. Field evaluation is batched and skips parts out of reach.

Fixed

  • An extrude outline with repeated points (or closed on its first point) made the whole model NaN: repeats are dropped, fewer than 3 different points is E003, and a NaN shape is an error naming the part.
  • Paint ownership ignored later cuts: a door in a cut archway was painted as the wall.
  • Godot gave a soft skin’s Skeleton3D the extras of its last bone (hitzone: eye): an unweighted last joint kiln_skeleton now carries the model’s own (report 17).
  • kiln import dropped textures in sub-folders (Kenney’s Textures/colormap.png): they’re copied with their folders, a missing one is an error, and the build cache keys on them.

0.2.0 - 2026-10-20

Smoother models: no more jagged seams, polygonal pupils, streaks or creases from decimation. Every built mesh changes (same triangle budgets).

Changed

  • Colour borders and patterns are cut on the full-resolution mesh, then decimation keeps them: the mesh is pulled apart along the borders, simplified with the borders locked (thinned to within 0.15 grid steps where straight), and welded back. Before, edge collapses crossed borders: jagged seams (a cap on a head), polygonal pupils and shading streaks where parts blend.
  • Patterns no longer refine the decimated mesh, so they cost far fewer triangles (the knight’s band: ~7000 fewer).
  • After decimation, slivers and tilted faces are evened out along the surface (borders and creases stay put).
  • Normals: sharp edges are judged by the surface, not by the triangle (big decimated triangles stay smooth), and on a border each side uses its own faces’ normals (no dark wedges beside a hoop or an eye).
  • Needs fast-simplification >= 0.2.0 (border locking, collapse replay).

Fixed

  • Triangle budgets: the build loop also loosens border tolerance when borders alone exceed the budget.

0.1.0 - 2026-10-20

First release.

Added

  • Notation (models/<name>.kiln.yaml): shapes sphere, ellipsoid, box, cylinder, cone, capsule, tube, torus, lathe, extrude, wedge; at, rotate; part options id, color, material, blend, cut, intersect, mirror, mirror_id, array (row/ring), shell, twist, noise, pattern (stripes, band, checker, dots), decal; rig (pivot, parent, meta, separate), skin none/rigid/soft, animations (poses or cycles: walk, waddle, hop, bob, spin, swing, breathe, wave, chain), variants (colour swaps), lod, budget, imports (source: + process:); lathe profiles are smoothed unless smooth: false.
  • Meshing: sparse sampling + dual contouring (sharp corners), decimation to the style’s budget, surface projection; clean colour borders cut into the mesh; smooth or faceted normals.
  • Styles: soft_toy, low_poly, toon, clay, diorama presets (materials incl. leather); project styles with extends; inspiration images.
  • Output: glb (+ variants, LODs), Godot model scenes (style materials, toon, outlines, rim) and look kits, manifest.json, CREDITS.md; --verify-godot.
  • Previews: turntable, closeup, animation filmstrip, line-up with a 1 m bar, gallery, vs inspiration, Godot engine renders.
  • Lint: E000-E011, W101-W110; builds meet the triangle budget after painting (W110 when patterns alone exceed it).
  • CLI (kiln init/new/lint/build/preview/lineup/gallery/status/mark/style/config/import/credits/doctor/skill/mcp), MCP server (kiln[mcp]), Python API for generator scripts, Claude skill.
  • Demo project (toy airline + toy siege) and a Godot 4.7 showcase.