Character and Item Appearance

The official ruleset supplies editable MZ bodies, clothing materials, item icons and item models. Character setup decides what a character wears; appearance editing changes the artwork used by those definitions. You do not need to build a rig or copy material bindings to dress an ordinary ruleset character.

Dress a character

1. Open the character's Entity Nodes.
2. Choose its ruleset race and class on Entity.
3. Add an Equipment node connected to Entity when you want a custom outfit.
4. Drag item headers from the project tree onto Equipment. Names are displayed, while stable project item references are stored. A drop replaces the item in the same slot; conflicting two-handed equipment and class restrictions are reported.
5. Open the character's Appearance entry to inspect the result in 2D or 3D, choose an animation, play/pause it, scrub its phase or turn the preview.

Without an Equipment node, the character inherits its class outfit. An explicitly empty Equipment list equips nothing. Starting equipment belongs in character setup; runtime equip/unequip changes belong in behavior or game interactions.

The default Human, Orc and Skeleton are distinct MZ body recipes. The same rig, clothing, materials and attached items produce directional sprites in 2D and native posed meshes in 3D. Procedural 3D characters are not camera-facing sprite billboards. Authored bitmap avatars remain available as a separate art choice.

Edit an item's appearance

Select Appearance beneath the item in the project tree. The workspace offers:

Control	What it edits or previews
Icon On / Icon Off	Independent active/default and inactive 2D icon recipes.
Model On / Model Off	Independent active/default and inactive world model recipes.
Worn model	A fitted or attached model used while equipped, when the item defines one.
Materials	The item's referenced procedural surface materials, when present.
On character / Object	Equipped preview versus the item by itself.
On / Off	The state currently shown in the appearance preview.

These controls replace the former separate On/Off tree rows. On is the ordinary default. An item with no distinct Off artwork falls back to its available default; opening the Off editor lets you author that state separately.

Inventory icons and world models are separate artwork. A sword's icon does not have to be a camera render of its model. In the map, the procedural item path uses its world model in 3D. Ordinary 2D ground items use their state icon; items with model effects can use a model-rendered sprite to keep effect anchors aligned. Worn clothing uses fitted geometry and material bindings; held equipment uses its grip and the character's socket.

Official item icons are 32×32 MZ recipes. Their colors, outlines and shading ramps use project palette indices. The global world-material resolution and character/map-item pixelization controls do not resize inventory icons.

On/Off behavior

Previewing Off does not toggle the live game's item. At runtime the item's boolean active attribute selects its state. Behavior changes that value and handles any additional gameplay response, such as a light or fuel use.

The procedural bindings are:

Attribute	Source
appearance_icon / appearance_icon_off	On / Off icon recipe.
appearance_geometry / appearance_geometry_off	On / Off model.
appearance_worn_geometry	Model fitted or attached to a wearer.
appearance_materials	Explicit mesh-part-to-material bindings for worn surfaces.

Use the workspace controls for ordinary editing. These keys are useful when inspecting item TOML or authoring custom ruleset definitions. Material bindings use mesh-part=material-source, for example a ruleset:material/... source; geometry can reference ruleset:geometry/... or a project asset UUID.

The torch demonstrates independently editable icons and models. Its lit icon is animated, and its 3D recipe can attach particle effects to the model/rig. The item behavior still owns light switching and fuel consumption. Bitmap-only items can continue to use on_tile_id and off_tile_id; see Attributes.

Change artwork, not every wearer

An item references its MZ assets. Editing a referenced asset changes every place that uses it; duplicating and rebinding an asset creates an independent variant. Clothing and equipment keep their ruleset identity and gameplay properties while you edit their look. Project edits are saved and survive ruleset refreshes.

All authored recipe colors resolve through the project's single palette. New projects start with Endesga 64. Palette switching can adapt that artwork to a smaller or larger color set without reauthoring each body, garment or icon. Direct bitmap overrides keep their own image colors.

Model, rig and animation editing

Use Edit model on a character's Appearance workspace to open its MZ geometry. Geometry/rig editing uses the main editor viewport, with construction rows in the sidebar. Material texture previews use the minimap.

Start with published body or item dimension controls. Open a group to inspect its ordinary geometry operations when those controls are not enough. The viewport provides Rig / joints, Add joints, Shape profiles, Pose / animate and Attachments tools. Animation controls remain available while inspecting the rig. See Rigging for authoring skeletons, grips and motions.

The material editor can also use Image / Tile Source to combine bitmap art with procedural shapes, or Model Render to use model output in artwork. See Procedural Materials.

Pixel style

Under Game → Settings → Characters & Map Items, 2D sprite pixels sets the sampling grid for characters and items on the map, while 3D pixel size sets crisp screen-pixel blocks for their meshes and shading. World textures and inventory artwork retain their own settings. See Tile and Appearance Settings.

The preview and runtime share appearance assets, but inspect changes in a real 2D/3D scene as well: camera scale, lighting and nearby scenery affect readability. Rendering performance and export/platform coverage remain active development; a preview working correctly is not a guarantee of a particular game FPS.