Scenario PATINA retexture

Overview

A mesh whose materials are flat colors or placeholders (an image-to-3D result, a whole diorama) becomes a PBR-shaded asset in three moves: group its materials into physical surface families, generate one seamless PATINA material per family on Scenario, and wire the five maps into Blender materials with vertices, faces, and transforms left unchanged. An optional film renders the original and the retextured scene along one camera path with the same lights, exposure, and cut, so the material response is the only thing that differs between the two panels. The film is rendered locally to present the 3D deliverable, never generated on Scenario, so the skill's output type stays 3D.

PATINA is Patina AI's material family on Scenario (tag sc:texture). This skill runs PATINA Material, the prompt-to-material member; the flat-texture members (Image to Maps, Material Extract) belong to scenario-textures. Repainting a whole mesh with a 3D-to-3D texturing model is the scenario-3d lane; this one keeps per-material control and editable Blender shaders. The agent's own steps stay on MCP; the bundled scripts (Blender 4.2 or newer, Python 3 with Pillow and numpy, ffmpeg) do the local repetition and never call Scenario. Connection and the core loop: the scenario skill. If a sibling skill named here is missing from your available skills, ask the user to install it (npx skills add scenario-labs/skills --skill <name>); unattended, proceed from tool schemas and flag the gap.

Quick reference

Step	Tool	Notes
Scope	teams_list, projects_list	The source asset and the generation destination may live in different projects: pass the right pair on every call
Fetch the mesh	asset_get, then asset_download	properties.materialCount, faceCount, hasUVs, dimensions; save with curl -fL
Inventory	inventory.py in Blender	Writes Before.blend and inventory.json: per-material object counts, bounds, base color
Find PATINA	search with target="models", query="patina", public=true	Pick PATINA Material (txt2img); model_schema_get before running
Price	model_run with dry_run=true	One 1024x1024 five-map set was 17 CU at authoring time; width, height, maps, upscaleFactor, and numOutputs move it
Generate	model_run with wait=false, one per family	Fixed seed per family; one jobs_wait over every job_id
Identify maps	asset_get on each output	metadata.type names the role; never rely on position
Download	asset_download, then curl -fL	textures/<family>/<role>.png
Apply	apply_materials.py in Blender	Manifest in materials-manifest.md; geometry hash asserted
Film	film.py pilot, run, status	Config in film-config.md; resumable

Material families

Read inventory.json, not the scene. Group materials by what the surface physically is (plaster, cedar, terracotta, glazed ceramic, brass, painted steel, glass, canvas, asphalt, foliage), reusing one family across color variants: the shader keeps each original color as a tint under the PATINA basecolor by default, so one plaster set serves cream, ochre, and gray walls. Split a shared color that sits on different surfaces (the same green on a canvas awning and a painted sign) with an object_overrides entry keyed by object-name prefix. A 41-material diorama needed 14 families; expect one job per family. Where the mesh already models bricks, roof tiles, or planks, prompt for the material of one element (fired clay, weathered cedar), never for the pattern: the geometry supplies the structure and a patterned map doubles it.

Generating one set per family

model_schema_get on the discovered id is the contract; the names below held at authoring time. prompt (required, 2048 characters) describes a flat, evenly lit, seamless physical surface with no objects or signage. maps is an array even for one entry (a bare string is ignored); keep the default of all five. width and height run 512 to 2048 in steps of 16, 1024 by default, and tileSize (128, about 1024 px) follows them: 256 for a 2048 set, or the repeat window no longer matches the texture. upscaleFactor 2 or 4 enlarges the predicted maps only, not the base texture. tilingMode restricts the repeat to one axis for planks or corrugation. numOutputs returns up to 4 variants of one prompt, each priced. enablePromptExpansion is on by default: turn it off when the prompt is deliberate. Set seed per family and keep it in the manifest so a family can be regenerated identically.

Keep dry_run and wait at the top level of model_run, beside model_id, team_id, and project_id; only model inputs belong under parameters. Price the exact payload with dry_run=true (a cost estimate, not parameter validation), confirm the budget (families times cost), then launch every family with wait=false and one jobs_wait over all the job ids (32 per call), re-called with pending_job_ids on timeout rather than answered with a second model_run. On a transport error, jobs_list before re-running: the job usually landed.

With the default five maps and numOutputs 1, a completed job carried six asset ids at authoring time: the base texture (metadata.type inference-txt2img-texture) and one asset per map, labeled texture-albedo, texture-normal, texture-smoothness, texture-metallic, and texture-height; numOutputs multiplies the set. Treat the metadata.type values read back with asset_get as the contract and map them to the five roles, never the order. The roughness request comes back labeled smoothness, and at authoring time the values were roughness (a brushed brass map read darker than a matte gray one), so the label is the trap, not the data: asset_display that map for a family whose finish you know before touching roughness_is_smoothness in the manifest, which inverts it when true. asset_download each map (PNG by default) into textures/<family>/<role>.png, and record prompt, seed, job id, asset ids, scope pair, and billed cuCost under the manifest's provenance.

Applying in Blender

blender --background --factory-startup --python scripts/inventory.py -- model.glb work/ imports the mesh (GLB, glTF, OBJ, or FBX) or opens a .blend, saves a packed work/Before.blend, and writes work/inventory.json. Write work/materials.json mapping every material name to a family and every family to its five maps (the manifest reference has every key and default), then run blender --background --factory-startup work/Before.blend --python scripts/apply_materials.py -- work/materials.json. It validates the manifest, projects a dedicated PatinaUV layer along each face's dominant axis at object scale so tile_span means meters per repeat (a mesh shared by linked duplicates is made single-user first), builds one Principled BSDF per original material and family, packs the images, and asserts the geometry hash is unchanged. The .blend is the deliverable: a glTF export flattens the calibrated shader graph (the exporter carries only direct texture links), so bake before exporting to an engine. Open the result or render one still before spending render time on a film.

Comparison film

python3 scripts/film.py config.json pilot renders both endpoints of every shot at half resolution for both passes and writes Pilot Contact.jpg with a rough time estimate. Fix framing and material defects from that sheet, then run renders at native resolution, resumes valid frames, saves both camera scenes as editable .blend files, and assembles and verifies the films; status prints progress. The run folder is fingerprinted from the inputs, the scripts, and the config, so a change to any of them starts a new folder. The entry points share common.py and scene.py, and film.py launches worker.py inside Blender; none of the three is run directly.

Design shots from inventory.json bounds, not from the example plan, whose coordinates fit one asset. The fast preset (EEVEE, 24 samples, half-resolution ray-traced reflections with denoising, 12 fps sources interpolated to 24 fps for slow moves) ran at about a second per 2368x1332 frame on a laptop, so the example plan's 792 source frames per pass take roughly a quarter hour each; refine from pilot_estimate.json, and keep source_fps 24 for fast motion. Verify with review/Sweep Contact.jpg, sampled at 2 fps across the whole master: one still per shot passes a defect that fades in mid-shot. A clean encoder log is not visual approval.

Worked example: retexture a street diorama and film the comparison

1. Use the team/project pair already authorized by the user, or enumerate with teams_list and projects_list and ask them to choose. Unattended without an authorized pair, stop before scoped calls and report the missing scope. asset_get on the diorama (an image-to-3D result: 41 materials, no image textures, 78K faces), asset_download, then curl -fL -o work/street.glb "<url>".
2. Inventory with inventory.py; group the 41 materials into families such as plaster, cedar, terracotta, ceramic, brass, steel, glass, canvas, asphalt, and leaf, with an override sending the awning objects to canvas.
3. search for PATINA, then model_schema_get on the returned PATINA Material id; re-discover each session.
4. model_run with top-level dry_run=true on the exact family payloads. At authoring time, 17 CU per family made 238 CU for fourteen; use the current estimates. Proceed within an already authorized budget or ask the user to approve the total. Unattended without enough authorized budget, return the estimates and stop before generation.
5. Fourteen model_run calls with top-level wait=false, prompts such as "aged lime plaster wall, fine mineral grain, flat, evenly lit, seamless", seed fixed per family; one jobs_wait with all fourteen ids until every row is complete.
6. asset_get on each output to read metadata.type; asset_display the smoothness-labeled plaster map to settle polarity; asset_download and curl -fL every map into textures/<family>/.
7. Write materials.json (roughness ranges per family, roughness_is_smoothness as settled, provenance with job ids and cost) and run apply_materials.py; open PATINA.blend once.
8. Copy example-config.json, replace the shots with ones framed from the inventory bounds, run film.py in pilot mode, inspect, then run; hand over the master, the sharing copy, both passes, and the two editable scenes, and name the interpolation used.
9. Optional: follow the scenario skill's multipart upload flow: upload_asset with kind: "video", file_name, content_type: "video/mp4", and file_size in bytes (omit data), PUT every part to its returned URL, then upload_asset_complete with the returned upload_id and the same scope. Only after completion returns the video asset id, file it with the source and the maps in a collection (collection_create, then collection_add_assets: catalog tools, run through scenario_tool_execute_write with their arguments under parameters).

Common mistakes

• Mapping outputs by position or by the source field alone: read metadata.type, and confirm the smoothness label's polarity before inverting.
• Prompting for bricks, tiles, or planks on a mesh that already models them: the pattern doubles.
• Asking a PATINA prompt for signage, objects, or lighting: it produces a material, not a scene.
• Regenerating a family because jobs_wait timed out or model_run raised a transport error: re-call with pending_job_ids, or jobs_list first.
• Running the full film before a pilot, or approving it from one still per shot instead of the 2 fps sweep sheet.
• Editing the config or a script mid-run and expecting the render to resume: the fingerprint changed, so it starts fresh.
• Hardcoding the PATINA id or the 17 CU figure: re-discover with search, re-price with dry_run.