Visible equipment sounds straightforward: draw the character, place a sword near one hand, place a shield near the other, and animate everything together.
Our screenshots proved otherwise.
A weapon can occupy the correct coordinates and still look pasted onto the Warden. A shield can cover the correct arm and still appear to float in front of the fist. A shoulder piece can look stable while idle, then jump when the attack frame changes.
The underlying problem is that attachment is only part of the illusion. Draw order matters. The weapon handle needs to render behind the gripping fingers. The shield needs a visible hand or strap relationship. Armor and accessories need attachment points for every substantially different body pose.
We replaced one-off placement adjustments with a hybrid paper-doll rig. The body animation renders first. Armor, held items, and accessories occupy separate layers. Cropped foreground hands from the active body frame render above the weapon and shield. Each animation frame defines sockets for the weapon, offhand, shoulder, helmet, body armor, pants, and Core. Each item defines its own size and pivot at the physical grip or attachment point.
We also built a development-only Rig Lab. It displays every current item in fixed poses and can reveal sockets, hide layers, change zoom, and combine selected equipment into a complete outfit. This gives us a repeatable inspection surface instead of comparing unrelated screenshots.
The lab immediately found real failures: rows that clipped the character, equipment compressed to the wrong combat dimensions, a shield pivot passing through its center, and selectors that changed visually without updating the live rig.
Automated tests validate the data contracts, but visual approval remains necessary. A test can prove a pivot is finite. It cannot prove a fist looks like it is holding a sword.
This is slower than nudging an image until one screenshot looks right. It is also the difference between supporting five equipment designs and supporting hundreds without repeating the same headache for every one.