252 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
252 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
# Side Cards
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Original playing-card artwork for The Grind, generated locally with Draw Things
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and assembled into dependency-free game assets.
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## Current workflow
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This project deliberately uses a simple hybrid format:
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- J/Q/K illustrations are matching PNG artwork generated by Draw Things.
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- A-10, indices and suit marks are deterministic SVG geometry.
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- Each finished court card is a standalone SVG with its PNG illustration
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embedded inside it. It scales normally in the game without hand-tracing the
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figure.
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Generate the nine non-Heart courts, then assemble the full deck:
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```sh
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./tools/.venv/bin/python tools/render_court.py --remaining
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./tools/.venv/bin/python tools/build_deck.py
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./tools/.venv/bin/python tools/audit_deck.py
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```
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Open `gallery.html` to inspect all 52 cards and the card back. The temporary game at
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`../index.html` also uses these local exports; it no longer fetches Wikimedia
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assets.
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## Folders
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- `concepts/` — calibration sheet and approved Hearts studies
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- `art/courts/raw/` — locally generated court illustrations
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- `exports/cards/` — finished standalone SVG cards and card back
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- `exports/art/` — cleaned raster artwork embedded by the SVG exports
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- `assets/fonts/` — Roboto Slab source font and its Apache-2.0 license
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- `masters/` — an archived vector-figure experiment; not the deck pipeline
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## Final deck files
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The authoritative finished deck is the **53 standalone SVG files in
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`exports/cards/`**: 52 faces plus `back.svg`. Each file is self-contained; the
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court and back raster artwork is embedded as a data URI. `exports/manifest.json`
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is the machine-readable file list, and `gallery.html` is only the visual review
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page. Files in `exports/art/`, `concepts/`, `art/courts/raw/`, and `masters/`
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are sources or build intermediates, not files to ship as the deck.
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Run `tools/build_deck.py` once after any design change. It deterministically
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rebuilds all 53 final SVGs together, including removal of detached court-art
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pixel islands. A printer-specific PDF or raster package still requires the
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printer's requested size, bleed, colour profile, and resolution.
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The generated court figures are final game artwork. Roboto Slab rank
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indices are converted to vector paths; suit marks,
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number-card layouts and assembly remain deterministic.
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House style specification: [`masters/STYLE.md`](masters/STYLE.md).
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Third-party notices for the vendored protocol files and the model checkpoint:
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[`tools/proto/LICENSE-NOTICE.md`](tools/proto/LICENSE-NOTICE.md).
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The provenance sidecars and license notice are quiet background records; they
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are not part of the day-to-day art workflow.
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## Calibration v1
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`concepts/calibration-v1.png`
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- SHA-256: `ff8a176c188c647532cd57df5c953f78af44e33c90ca2a536470b52dc02e780f`
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- Generator: OpenAI built-in image generation
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- Reference images supplied to generator: none
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- Status: concept only, not a production asset
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### Prompt
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> Design a cohesive original Anglo-American-style playing card system with the
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> clarity and familiarity of a premium traditional casino deck, but with
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> entirely new court characters, poses, faces, garments, ornament, linework,
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> suit symbols, and card back. Show the Jack, Queen, and King of Hearts; Ace and
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> Ten of Spades; one Joker; and two alternate card backs. Use crisp flat
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> vector-like illustration, precise black keylines, a restrained red, black,
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> golden-yellow, and muted-blue palette, white card stock, mirrored court
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> composition, and conventional corner indices. No trademarks, logos, brand
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> names, recognizable branded artwork, photorealism, or watermarks.
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### Evaluation
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- Court figures form a coherent family and remain legible at reduced size.
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- Both back concepts are usable directions; the navy back has stronger contrast.
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- The ten has the correct number of central pips.
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- Several rotated indices are malformed. Production indices must therefore be
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vector typography, never baked into generated artwork.
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- Court detail should be reduced slightly before final vector reconstruction.
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## DrawThings court study v1
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`concepts/dt-court-qh-v1.png`
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- SHA-256: `e53fd536a35f45f97c431a76e2a61af39262faf5bfecd56cc2ebf0aaab7cb073`
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- Generator: local Draw Things server, `qwen_image_2512_bf16_i8x.ckpt`
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- Settings: 640x896, 30 steps, DPMPP2MTrailing, guidance 4.0, seed 7
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- Reference images supplied to generator: none
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- Status: concept only, not a production asset
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Generated locally via `tools/dt_client.py` — no metered image API. This exists to
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confirm the house style is reachable without OpenAI image generation.
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### Evaluation
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- Palette, keyline weight, and flat vector-like rendering match the calibration
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sheet's direction closely enough to serve as the ongoing concept source.
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- Mirrored two-way court composition resolved correctly.
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- Carries no indices or text by design, which suits the production rule above:
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suit symbols and indices are vector work, never generated.
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- Cost is wall-clock, not money: ~7 minutes per 640x896 card at 30 steps.
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## DrawThings court study v2 (img2img)
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`concepts/dt-court-qh-v2.png`
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- SHA-256: `455436aca85380a9f5e2a0c4fe5b1577249aa5d7835e1c01ea205825f680072e`
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- Generator: local Draw Things server, `qwen_image_2512_bf16_i8x.ckpt`
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- Settings: 640x896, 30 steps, DPMPP2MTrailing, guidance 4.0, seed 88,
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img2img strength 0.68
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- Reference image: the Queen of Hearts crop from `calibration-v1.png`, with the
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two corner index strips painted white before encoding
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- Model SHA-256: `b60a1430040108f8808ef20b47196b09526b1394f7438feeba5538bb89248354`
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- Draw Things: `1.20260716.0`
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- Status: concept only, not a production asset
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v2 predates the provenance sidecars, so its prompts are recorded here in full.
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> Original playing card court figure illustration, a queen wearing an ornate
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> golden crown, crisp flat vector-like illustration, precise black keylines,
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> restrained palette of red, black, golden-yellow and muted blue on white card
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> stock, mirrored two-way composition, ornate patterned robes, holding a
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> stylized flower, thin black double-line border frame, completely empty plain
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> white corners, plain white background
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Negative prompt:
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> corner index, corner marking, letter Q, rank letter, suit index, heart symbol
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> in corner, pip, text, letters, numbers, typography, watermark, signature,
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> logo, photorealistic, photograph, 3d render, soft gradient shading, blurry,
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> noisy, drop shadow, heavy solid black
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### How this was reached
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Four rounds of text-only prompting locked the style but oscillated on layout:
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each composition fix over-corrected the previous one.
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- Asking for a "premium traditional casino deck" reintroduced corner indices.
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- "Generous white margin" shrank the figure until it floated in white.
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- "Classic diamond lozenge silhouette" was drawn as a literal rhombus outline.
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- "Robes flare to the card edges" pushed the robes outside the border frame.
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Pinning the composition with img2img off the mockup solved this in one pass.
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Style, palette, and keyline weight were already matched by round 2.
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### Evaluation
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- Composition, palette, and figure now track `calibration-v1.png` closely, with
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cleaner and more consistent linework than the original sheet.
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- Strength 0.55-0.72 preserves composition; 0.85 drifts and garbles the index.
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- **Open issue:** the model re-draws a corner suit pip even when the reference
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corners are blanked and pips are negative-prompted — it infers them from the
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card context. In this render the pip lands *inside* the border frame, so it
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cannot be removed by cropping to the panel. Removing it needs inpainting or a
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mask, or the vector stage must cover that region.
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## Court family test v3 (J/Q/K of Hearts)
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`concepts/dt-court-jh-v3.png`, `dt-court-qh-v3.png`, `dt-court-kh-v3.png`
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Each PNG has a JSON sidecar recording both prompts, the checkpoint SHA-256, the
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Draw Things build, the reference hash, all sampler settings and the client
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revision. Regenerate with `tools/render_court.py JH QH KH`.
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- Model: `qwen_image_2512_bf16_i8x.ckpt`
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SHA-256 `b60a1430040108f8808ef20b47196b09526b1394f7438feeba5538bb89248354`
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- Draw Things: `1.20260716.0`
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- Settings: 640x896, 30 steps, DPMPP2MTrailing, guidance 4.0, seed 88,
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img2img strength 0.68, seed_mode ScaleAlike
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- Reference: each card's cell from `calibration-v1.png` (cells measured by
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background-gutter detection: all four are 329x460, ratio 0.715), resized to
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640x896 with the two corner index strips painted white
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- Status: approved Heart court artwork used by `tools/build_deck.py`
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### Evaluation
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- The three cards read as a coherent family: consistent linework, palette,
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keyline weight and mirrored composition. The King's beard, crown and sword
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resolved without trouble.
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- Rank letters are absent, as intended; `build_deck.py` adds them reliably.
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- The generated Heart marks are correct and align with the SVG suit overlay.
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- Generated frame segments are locally inpainted out during assembly. One
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continuous SVG inner frame is then drawn behind the figure, giving the court
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the intentional traditional frame-break effect. The approved upper figure supplies both ends of the card by exact
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180-degree rotation; a symmetric blended join avoids mismatched lower art.
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- The temporary game has been verified at 110×154. No smallest production size
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has been chosen, so this does not constrain the master artwork.
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The house style specification derived from this test lives in
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[`masters/STYLE.md`](masters/STYLE.md).
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## Archived vector experiment — Queen of Hearts
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`masters/queen-hearts.svg`
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This was an experiment in hand-authoring the generated figure as SVG. It is not
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used by `build_deck.py`; the practical deck keeps court illustrations as raster
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art inside standalone SVG cards.
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Editable groups: `frame`, `indices`, `veil`, `garments`, `ornament`, `props`,
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`hair-back`, `face`, `hair-front`, `crown`, `keylines`. All colour lives in one
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stylesheet block at the top; the rank glyph is drawn geometrically so it needs
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no font at render time.
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**Status: structurally correct, artistically unfinished.** The mirror, clip,
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frame, indices, seam, palette and group organisation are all verified working.
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The figure drawing is a schematic — the face is doll-like, the hair reads as
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flat slabs, the robe silhouette is a lens rather than cloth, and the ornament is
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far sparser than the concepts. It is a sound skeleton to refine, not a finished
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master.
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### Size behaviour
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`tools/size_test.py ../masters/queen-hearts.svg` at 110/220/440/1050:
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| 110px | 220px | 440px | 1050px |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| 0.189 | 0.119 | 0.053 | 0.022 |
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It reads cleanly at all four sizes, so a single universal master works — but
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only because the art is currently sparse. **Re-run this once real detail is
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added**, since that is when the small-size question actually bites.
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## Generation toolchain
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`tools/` holds a local Draw Things gRPC client. Run `tools/setup.sh` once, then
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drive it through `tools/dt_client.py`.
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Notes that are not obvious from the Draw Things docs and cost real time to work
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out — see also the `proto/` copies vendored from `drawthingsai/draw-things-community`:
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- The app's API server speaks **TLS** on port 7859 and serves only a self-signed
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leaf (`CN=localhost`, issuer "Draw Things Root CA"). The client pins that leaf.
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- `ImageGenerationRequest.configuration` is a **FlatBuffers** blob
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(`proto/config.fbs`), not protobuf. Fields are written by slot index in
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declaration order; deprecated fields still consume their slot.
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- `start_width` / `start_height` are in units of **64px**, so 640x896 is 10x14.
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- Returned images are **not** PNG. They are s4nnc tensors: a 68-byte ccv header
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(`CCV_16F`, NHWC, dims) followed by an fpzip stream, with pixel values in
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[-1, 1]. `dt_client.decode_png` handles this.
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