How to get more colors for creatures
chimeric
Member Posts: 1,163
The toolset - Near Infinity, that is - gives limited options when it comes to creature colors. If you want to change the hue of someone's skin, major or minor color, the tint of the blade, the rim of the shield and so on, you have about 250 colors to choose from. This is not as many as it sounds - a lot of the colors are glossy and only good for metal or leather, others are too dark or too bright to be useful anywhere. Reds are especially scarce - there are only three real red colors. I found a way to infinite colors, though not glossy colors. If you want more metals or leathers that gleam as the creature moves and turns, I can't help you.
To change a creature's colors you need to either have the engine cast a spell on it or make it equip an undroppable item with Instant/Permanent Natural/Nonmagical Self-targeted effects. You can randomize them if you want. To do this en masse, for whole categories of creatures, use Weidu to put items on them. (You can read my recent posts at Spellhold about this.) Put Set Color Glow Solid effects here and pick the creature part you want changed. Here you can draw from the whole spectrum at any brightness and saturation. Unless you want to imitate glows from Tron, put them both in the bottom of the table.
This produces a good linen-hue yellow not found in the regular colors:
Brightness controls how glow-like your color is, saturation - how much it acts as an overlay. If saturation is very low, nearly gray, the color will be a tint of the regular color of the creature. In this way this function is somewhat useful for skin - as a solid color it is too flat, especially when there is a lot of skin shown:
To change a creature's colors you need to either have the engine cast a spell on it or make it equip an undroppable item with Instant/Permanent Natural/Nonmagical Self-targeted effects. You can randomize them if you want. To do this en masse, for whole categories of creatures, use Weidu to put items on them. (You can read my recent posts at Spellhold about this.) Put Set Color Glow Solid effects here and pick the creature part you want changed. Here you can draw from the whole spectrum at any brightness and saturation. Unless you want to imitate glows from Tron, put them both in the bottom of the table.
This produces a good linen-hue yellow not found in the regular colors:
Brightness controls how glow-like your color is, saturation - how much it acts as an overlay. If saturation is very low, nearly gray, the color will be a tint of the regular color of the creature. In this way this function is somewhat useful for skin - as a solid color it is too flat, especially when there is a lot of skin shown:
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But with all respect for that great simplicity, if we (I) want a more sophisticated environment, where players will have more and different things to do - and modders will be encouraged rather than discouraged to create something new - then we need to train players' eye to expect and delight in difference rather than sameness. The amount of difference is going to vary for creatures. In what I've done bandits are really quite diverse, with a wide variety of skin and hair colors, many low avatars and, occassionally, some funky armor hues. Flaming Fist Mercenaries are generally taller, more fair (lighter complexion) and Amnians are darker. We can assume that soldiers' equipment is standard, which is why I haven't touched weapons or changed the shape of shields, but some shirts will be dark with sweat, some helmets will be lined with bronze, some sword hilts will be gold. This is not a modern army that wears factory-made one-size-fits-all threads that you don't even own so can't customize. A few soldiers may wear different uniforms - 4% in my recolors are what I think of as sargeants. If you see an Amnian guy in a golden-plated helmet and a white shirt (Glow effect for sleeves), it's a sargeant.
The Flaming Fist doesn't take bribes, so there is very little gold on them and the body types are somewhat different. Many Hobgoblin Elite will have green-glowing swords, representing their use of poison (not actually on the swords, they only shoot it, but it conveys the idea - and it's subtle). They are also big on brass now, for a foreign marching-band look. And so on. I hope people will appreciate it.
I have really been noticing the little changes that I think atweaks gives to creature colors. I really like to see and enjoy these small changes a great deal. Great ideas on the changes you are talking about. It would great to see it on a wide scale application.
Illustration: the freshly cooked Ogre.
Notice the amount of skin shown - humanoid skin a lot of them wear for belts and shirts. Ogre Berserkers will be dressed in people's hides from head to toe. For skin colors I went away from green towards livid shades of brown and red.