Captain's Log
Got the ship standing last night. Over a thousand pieces, every one textured, the whole Drifter finally up in a fresh level. And it looked wrong — flat grey, or beige decks and navy walls depending on the light, no detail anywhere no matter how close the camera got.
Spent the whole night chasing it as a lighting problem, because that's exactly what it looked like. Added lights. Made everything movable. None of it changed a thing, because it was never lighting. The master material had never actually compiled — one texture sampler was pointed at nothing, a null reference, and the engine just quietly fell back to its own default material on every single mesh in the level.
The tell was sitting right there the whole time. Flip to unlit view and a flat constant grey can only mean one thing — a missing base color, never a lighting issue. Five minutes, if I'd reached for that first instead of a full night detouring through exposure and sky settings. Fixed now. Ship's wearing its real materials.