Making and judging

How to compose a prompt for a new thing, how to hold a frame against the book, and what survives meshing.

Making something

Find its zone and read that zone's page: palette, motif, architecture, the one "never".
Pick the side of the wall and so the look: inside or outside.
Pick the kind: scene, figure, building, sheet.
Compose with the blocks on the prompt blocks page, in the order the recipe gives. With the CLI:

stylebook prompt eventyrland nordalen building "a smokehouse: tall and narrow, a smoking hatch with an ember glow"

Look at the result and run the checklist below. Rewrite the prompt, not the image: a portfolio of first attempts is a failure.
If it will be meshed, it is a reference image: one object, plain light-grey ground, no shadow, no thin or see-through part, a margin around it, and the pose and frame blocks that go with it. The look of the image is the look of the model.

What every prompt needs

The block order is fixed: STYLE, then the zone's fragment, then the subject, then POSE, then FRAME. Only the STYLE depends on the side of the wall.
Numbers, not adjectives: "exactly four and a half heads tall", "mid values only: the darkest wood is a mid slate teal".
The hour and the share of the frame for a scene: "two thirds of the picture is lake blue and cool birch green".
A "never" sentence where the model tends to add something: "no banners, no railings, no weapons pointed at the viewer".
No named living artist. Petter's own block names a studio because he wrote it; nothing else does.
Under 900 characters for Krea 2 Turbo, with the subject first. It keeps the look and drops a long scene.

The two painters

gpt-image-2.5 follows head counts, eye size and "mid values only", and gives rendered three-tone figures. Krea 2 Turbo gives a flatter, more graphic look, ignores head counts and needs short prompts. Current recommendation: gpt-image-2.5 for outside figures and buildings, Krea 2 for flat things (flower and tree cards, far cards, sky). Decide after the first models are judged.

Krea 2 Turbo's fisherman's house: tall, tarred teal planks, a turf roof with buttercups, a carved wheel in the gable. — The outside building block as it stands held on Krea 2 Turbo. Not validated on the game's local Krea 2.

A flat, bold fisherman holding a lantern. — The short figure prompt gave the whole figure at about four heads. Krea does not follow head counts closely.

A tall mossy stone shapes with carved wheels around a tiny red figure. — Rejected: with a 2 700 character prompt Krea kept the look and dropped the whole scene.

Judging a frame

Hold it against these. Every line is yes or no; two noes fail the frame.

Any frame

Is it three or four tones per surface, with detail only at one focal point?
Is the darkest tone deep teal or deep violet, with at most 3 % of the frame (8 % at night) under luma 0.08, and nothing pure white?
Is the light warmer than the shade, and does the shade have a colour (blue-violet inside, teal outside)?
Is there a lit window or a lantern where folk are?
Do all living things have bright eyes with a highlight, and no bared teeth?
Do glow colours together cover 10 % or less, and are they only the four?
Is there at most one ornament per building, painted inside and carved outside?
Is every edge within reach rounded?

Inside the wall

Is it enclosed: framed on both sides, the far view closed within 150 m, sky at most 30 %?
Is the median luma in the zone's value key (about 0.38 to 0.55 in the villages)?
Is the ground still green or tan at dusk?

Outside the wall

Does one side run to a horizon, with three depth layers and the far layer close to the sky's colour?
Is there one thing ten times her height and one small sign of folk?
Do silhouettes taper and lean 2 to 8 degrees, with rounded corners?
Is the median luma in the zone's value key, and the mean saturation at most 0.38?
Is one key colour half to two thirds of the frame, and is the hour the zone's?
Is the zone's one "never" absent?

An asset

Is the head count right (4.5 for human folk on both sides of the wall, 3.5 for a child, elves 5) and each eye at least 1/5 of the face's width, with strong brows?
Is the building proportion right (inside as wide as tall; outside tall and narrow or long and low)?
Could the reference image be meshed: one object, plain ground, no thin or see-through part?

A seam or a border

At a gate: five things flip, one landmark in the arch, flowers handed over, nothing half and half?
At a soft border: ground hue, plants and trees hand over in the middle 40 m, no buildings of either zone within 100 m, a marker on the way?

Measuring

tools/frame-stats.py in the research portfolio prints luma percentiles, saturation, the share under luma 0.08, the dominant colours, and whether the median luma lies in a zone's value key. Its palette share is a rough guide only: it tells warm zones from cool ones but cannot tell Solengen from Møllebakken, Kysten from Sørvika, or Alvheim from Fjellet.

What survives meshing

Judged 2026-10-01 from four Pixal3D meshes made from this book's blocks, all on the Models page. Alvheim's three are judged in its book.

Model	Verdict	What came through	Faults
Stue (inside, building)	survives whole	the sagging turf roof with daisies, bulging walls, the door's rosemaling as a clean painted patch, lit windows, round honey stones, flower boxes and bench as separate things	the ground pad is part of the mesh: cut it in the pipeline
Fiskerstue (outside, building)	survives whole	the lean, the tall narrow outline, plank strokes in the texture, slate teal wood on every side (the invented back too), the carved sun wheel, crossed gable tips, the stone foot	one small lit window only; the back wall is plain
Fisker (outside, figure)	survives	stocky at about 4.5 heads, eyes open and bright from front and side, broad brush planes on the smock, rope coil and lantern separate	the lantern meshed black; the face is a little smaller and darker than drawn; the woven band is faint
Bestemor (3-head inside design, retired)	survives	a clean face, the bun as one mass, the apron's rosemaling flat	kept as a comparison only (the folk decision of 2026-10-01)

What this settles:

Painted light "from above and in front" bakes acceptably. No dark band under the arms or eaves on any of the four.
Three-tone hard-edged paint survives the texture step as well as the soft inside paint does. The outside brush is still readable on planks, turf and cloth.
Buildings are safe to mesh as drawn. Figures are safe when the face is kept clear of painted shadow: Alvheim's Eldrid lost her eyes to violet shading round them, the fisherman did not.
Anything meant to glow comes back dark (lantern glass, gems). Paint it pale and matte in the reference and let the game light it.
gpt-image-2.5 references mesh cleanly. Open question 2 (which painter for outside assets) can be decided on this.