Unity Visual Work
- Start with Unity's existing asset preview, animation or VFX editor, Prefab Mode, Scene view, Game view, or the project's direct development route.
- Use project-owned Unity capture, recorder, test, or build tooling only when a named consumer requires screenshots, video, baselines, comparison, CI, or remote review.
- When the owner can see Unity, finish one-off review with the relevant live Game view, Scene view, Prefab Mode, animation/VFX editor, or existing project route ready for inspection. Do not manufacture a contact sheet or review package merely because the owner must judge the result.
- For animation, particles, transitions, and lighting change, leave continuous Unity playback ready at the relevant camera and distance. Record video only when requested or when a named remote or retention consumer needs it.
- "Human and AI review", repeated inspection, or a desired standing capability does not by itself earn Recorder automation, a capture matrix, contact sheet, or export harness. Name the remote, comparison, CI, audit, release, or retention decision that cannot use the live Unity route first.
Engine-native review is the ordinary Unity workflow. A custom gallery is an ordinary product or project-tool feature, not a STAGE review layer. Capture and export remain project-owned outputs of the native workflow rather than a second STAGE visual system.
Match The Unity Surface To The Claim
Prefer the smallest existing surface containing the production consumer:
| Claim | Prefer |
|---|---|
| Import, mesh, material, rig, or local animation | Asset preview, Prefab Mode, Animation window, or VFX tooling |
| Composed world, camera, lighting, or procedural content | Existing development scene or runtime debug route |
| HUD, input, pause, loading, quality, or platform presentation | Game view, development player, or the real gameplay route |
| Repeated player or author discovery | A product feature such as a codex, bestiary, world previewer, or authoring window, if the project independently needs it |
Resolve subjects through the project's ScriptableObject catalogs, Addressables or Resources policy, scene references, registries, factories, prefabs, and generated inputs. Use production meshes, materials, shaders, Animator or Animancer configuration, particles, VFX Graph, UI Toolkit or UGUI composition, render pipeline, post-processing, and quality settings when they are material. Missing content must fail visibly; do not silently create capsule, cube, pink-material, or synthetic-motion substitutes.
Human-Editable Presentation
When a recurring project feature needs presentation controls, serialize them in normal project-owned assets or components. Camera framing, orbit, field of view, distance, background, lighting, quality, playback, resolution, aspect ratio, input device, and procedural seed are legitimate controls only when they help a named user answer a recurring question. Generated setup may seed absent defaults once but must not overwrite deliberate Inspector or authoring-tool values.
Changing a Transform, light value, quality setting, timeline, or visibility flag does not prove a visible result. Inspect the active Game view or player output. Animation, particles, physics, tweens, Timeline, and changing light require continuous production playback when frame-to-frame behavior matters.
Readiness, Ownership, And Input
Treat import, compilation, domain reload, scene composition, asynchronous asset load, and the first stable rendered frame as separate readiness boundaries. Do not judge a pink, unbound, T-posed, placeholder, or partially loaded frame as final content.
Own and release every temporary GameObject, material, RenderTexture, camera, light, particle system, callback, subscription, tween, and input binding. Restore camera, focus, time, quality, and scene state on close. Repeated open-close-open is a useful lifecycle check, especially with domain reload disabled.
For shipping UI, verify pointer, keyboard, and controller paths independently, including visible focus, Submit, Cancel, device switching, repeat cadence, and restoration of prior focus. A selected EventSystem object or UI Toolkit focus value is not enough if the rendered highlight or command is wrong.
Procedural Content And MCP
Use the production generator, mesh builder, materials, colliders, and runtime placement path. Keep fixed seeds for replay, bounded random seeds for exploration, and promoted failure seeds for regression. Objective checks can cover holes, bounds, slopes, supports, clearance, determinism, shader support, and ownership; humans still judge composition, route readability, repetition, atmosphere, and taste at gameplay distance.
Unity MCP may focus the editor, wait for compilation, inspect hierarchy and serialized state, enter Play Mode, invoke project-owned operations, read the console, run tests, and obtain frames. It is an operation surface, not visual authority. Do not regenerate broad scenes or prefabs merely to make review callable. If repeated operation earns a stable command, expose the smallest project-owned action with readiness, state provenance, reset, teardown, and honest limitations.