test02_lamp — Blender MCP Build Report

Goal. Build a high-quality articulated desk lamp through the Blender MCP, using Claude's handoff doc as a structural guide but supersizing it per Jon's direction: LOTS of polygons, beveled edges, a ground plane, studio HDRI lighting, and reflective metal surfaces. Compare against the test01_sphere run on metrics (tokens, cost, round-trips, errors, screenshots, object count/naming).

The lamp geometry, materials, lighting, parenting, and .blend file were all completed and verified during the build session. The only artifact not delivered at the time was this report (the previous agent failed to emit the file write). This document reconstructs the full record from on-disk evidence: scene inventory, round-trip metrics log, and viewport captures.

The exact text Jon sent to start the test02_lamp build (reconstructed from the session log). The structural skeleton came from a Claude-authored handoff note:

📄 Claude Handoff Document — test02_hermes_handoff_desk_lamp_v1.0.md

Message 1 — scope (first message)

Do not begin any work, but we are going to build something with the Blender MCP

Message 2 — the build directive (the original prompt)

Claude has written you a handoff note on how to build a 3D lamp in Blender.  You do not need to do everything exactly like this, but it is a very clear guideline.  Every file you save will have the prefix test02 and then the rest of the name, this is for images, blender files, documentation.  We will want to compare metrics, so must keep a log with text prompt, Prompt version used, tokens used, cost in money, how long it took.

Model/provider
Round-trip count per build
Blender error messages verbatim
Screenshots after key steps
Final scene objects count and naming

In the end you will make a test02_lamp HTML file that summarizes everything, you can look at "D:\AI_software\Hermes_agent_outputs\blender02_deepseek\test01_sphere_report.html" as a decent example to follow, for sure make it all self contained HTML that can be deployed later.

When you a building this, use LOTS of polygons so all rounding looks smooth, and edges should be beveled to look good, add a light when  needed, have a ground plane to build on, and use some HDR image and lots of reflective metal surfaces so it looks good in the viewport.

Excluded: test02_lamp_C_final_rendered.png was NOT included. Vision QA confirmed it contains a default Blender scene (wireframe cube + grid + 3D cursor), not the lamp. Flagged for a clean re-render (see QA Findings).

Round-trip interpretation. 6 logical build round-trips + 3 checkpoint captures, all succeeded. The single error ('Mesh' object has no attribute 'use_auto_smooth') occurred on RT2 when the agent attempted a legacy smooth-shading call; it was resolved by retry and did not block the build. Effective build round-trips: 6, all succeeded.

Naming. 8 Lamp_* meshes follow the Claude handoff skeleton exactly, plus a Ground_Plane added per Jon's explicit "add a ground plane" instruction (overriding the handoff's no-ground constraint). The parent chain terminates at Lamp_Base as specified: Lamp_Bulb → Lamp_Head → Lamp_Arm_Upper → Lamp_Joint_Upper → Lamp_Arm_Lower → Lamp_Joint_Lower → Lamp_Column → Lamp_Base.

• World: Environment Texture → Background → World Output. Source studio_white_front_north_daylight.exr (user-provided studio HDRI). Drives both lighting and reflections.
• Fill_Light: AREA, 200W, size 1.5 — soft fill.
• Rim_Light: AREA, 300W, size 1.5 — rim/edge definition.
• Camera: 50mm, location (2.8, −2.5, 1.5), active — three-quarter hero framing.
• Engine: CYCLES, 128 samples, denoising on, 1920×1080.

• Re-render. Reconnect Blender, load test02_lamp.blend, and run a clean Cycles 128s (or 256s) render to test02_lamp_final_cycles.png. This replaces the excluded bad artifact and gives a portfolio still.
• A/B comparison. This run is the DeepSeek-V4-Flash leg (NVIDIA free tier) — pairs against test01_sphere (hy3) for the model-comparison goal. Append a comparison table to both reports once the render lands.
• Bump MCP bridge timeout if a higher-sample Cycles render trips the 300s ceiling (as seen in test01).
• Optional polish. Subdivide the ground plane further or add a soft contact-shadow trick for stronger floor grounding.