VoidHorizon · review lab

Power animations

Every COTA immortal power — defined in campaign-core/src/powers.rs — mapped to the motion and VFX it fires in the on-foot fight. Unlike weapons, no power carries a dedicated skeletal animation clip: a power cast rides a procedural hand/eye pose (cast_hand / cast_eyes, synthesized by neural_rig_anim.gd, not baked into any GLB) while the shell paints the power's signature particle VFX from the POWER_FX vocabulary (fx_lab_book.gd). Verified by parsing the animation tracks of every rig GLB: the baked clip set is locomotion + weapon + reaction only — there is no beam, slam, blink, rift, overload, surge, portal, or flight clip anywhere. The tiles below show the generic poses a power cast currently borrows on the shared A01 rig; the gap list at the bottom names every dedicated power clip + VFX the system implies but no GLB carries yet — that queue feeds the forge / animation lane.

Poses a cast borrows today — generic A01 clips, VFX painted over

These are the real, baked clips on the shared A01 rig (a01_coherent_anim.glb) that a power activation reuses today. The power's identity comes from the shell's POWER_FX particle burst layered over one of these poses — the pose itself is not power-specific. Each dedicated cast/channel/projectile clip is a gap below.

Projection powers — directed hand cast + area burst

Offensive powers project along the immortal's facing: a beam, a slam, a warp rift, an electric arc. All ride the generic melee/cast_hand pose plus their POWER_FX burst; none has a dedicated windup/release clip. Effect numbers are the live combat constants from powers.rs.

Power → effect · VFX · borrowed pose · dedicated clip needed (4 powers)
PowerActivate effect (rule)VFX kindBorrowed poseDedicated clip needed

Mind & control — gaze / warp / stasis

Control powers still a mind, bend time, or disorient. They are the most under-served: Continuum's blink/stasis and Influence's pacify have no borrowed pose that reads correctly — the shell falls back to cast_eyes or nothing.

Power → effect · VFX · borrowed pose · dedicated clip needed (3 powers)
PowerActivate effect (rule)VFX kindBorrowed poseDedicated clip needed

Creation & sustain — shield / heal / conjure

Creation powers conjure hardlight, knit flesh, or spawn bio-allies. Matter Creation's shield-snap is the closest to a real clip — it borrows device_raise. Body Reconstruction is a passive that rides idle.

Power → effect · VFX · borrowed pose · dedicated clip needed (3 powers)
PowerActivate effect (rule)VFX kindBorrowed poseDedicated clip needed

Body & martial — flurry / shapeshift forms

Martial Warfare's flurry borrows the slash_a/melee swings (no dedicated multi-hit combo). Shapeshift's Battle / Stealth / Bioship forms have forged bodies (art-gen/rigged_std/shapeshift_*.glb) but zero animation tracks and no morph-transition clip — the Bioship travel form also implies a flight loco clip that does not exist.

Power → effect · VFX · borrowed pose · dedicated clip needed (2 powers)
PowerActivate effect (rule)VFX kindBorrowed poseDedicated clip needed

Gap list — power clips & VFX the system implies but no GLB carries

Verified by parsing the animation tracks of every rig GLB and reading the live power dispatch in powers.rs (activate_power) + the FX vocabulary in fx_lab_book.gd. Each row is ready work for the GPU forge / animation-authoring lane: author the clip (and/or bake the VFX onto the character GLB), then re-verify here.

PowerMissing clip / VFXWhy it's implied