Textures - Colour and Brightness

Quality Guideline: Textures - Colour and Brightness

Appears in: Buy Mode, and General Guidelines

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Possible Assessments

Category	Title	Description
General Guidelines	Multiple Issues	At least some of the textures appear to be too bright or dark, and too saturated.
General Guidelines	Too dark or bright	Significant parts of the textures seem to be pure black or pure white, which do not display correctly in-game.
General Guidelines	Saturated	Significant parts of the textures seem to be too intense and saturated in colour.
General Guidelines	None	The texture quality and brightness looks well done. :)

General Guidelines

Colour choices can make all the difference between an item which looks good in game and one that turns into a featureless void. For this reason, it's important to choose colours which are not too bright, not too dark, and not too saturated, all of which can look strange in game.

Brightness

When creating recolours (or textures) that are black and/or white, it's a common mistake to think that pure black or pure white are the colours that you want. However, doing this will result in textures which look extremely dark or light compared to other in-game items, sometimes creating either items which appear so bright they almost glow, or items that resemble a "black hole" with no visible details. Either way, shadow or highlight details will either be difficult to see or disappear altogether.

When creating black and white colours, we recommend using values similar to these (keeping in mind that you may need to tweak these a bit to fit your individual project):

Black garment/object

Base colour: RGB 50.50.50 (dark grey)
Highlight colour: RGB 90.90.90 (lighter grey, but still not white).
Shadow colour: RGB 30.30.30 (very dark grey, but still not black)

White garment/object

Base colour: RGB 200.200.200 (light grey)
Highlight colour: RGB 235.235.235 (lighter grey, but still not white)
Shadow colour: RGB 160.160.160 (darker grey, but still not black)

Saturation

While bright colours are fun, colours that are too bright and over-saturated can cause texture details to be lost. This could overwhelm a room or item, and be quite hard to look at in game. If you're a bit concerned regarding your textures looking too bright or how to start with neon items, here are a few tips:

For normal colours that you don't want to look neon or "day-glo", stick to 60% colour saturation and brightness at most (60% meaning your 2D program like photoshop or GIMP's setting for brightness or colour saturation)
Check if the texture details are still clearly visible, or if they're getting overwhelmed by the brightness of your colours. You should be able to easily see all details like zippers, fabric wrinkles, and shadows.
If you actually want neon/day-gki, we recommended using at least 80% color saturation and brightness.

One way to fix this easily is to lower the saturation a bit and check if in-game you can easily see the details as well as the highlights or shadows on your textures :)

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Examples

Correct - Just black!

It might be a tad dark grayish, however, we can clearly see the details and highlights that we added. The shadows in our dress's wrinkles are also not solid black.

Correct - Still acceptable black

The shadows here are a bit dark but still passable. But given how we can still see some of the important shadows, it's still a nice recolour despite the shadows being solid black.

Incorrect - Solid black

The dress doesn't seem to have any highlight bits or shadows we can see and thus a bucket filled looking dress... what a dress (and most clothes too) really makes it, well, clothes is the great wrinkles and wavy bits that we can see. Even with that, we can see highlights and shadows - if not - details like pockets and seams!

Correct - Just white!

We can clearly see the shadows and all the dress's awesome bits, like waves and wrinkles. If not, details and seams!

Correct - Still acceptable white

It's a tad too bright, but it's approvable. Not all the shadows seem to be showing up just because of the specular map/normal map. This way we know that the dress is approvable for its colour!

Incorrect - Solid white

Despite the picture being a little bright, the dress seems to be blending right into the wall. Especially since walls don't have wrinkles and wavy bits in them, we know that this dress is pretty much a bucket fill that gets some of its shadowy bits from its specular map or normal map.

Correct - Just black!

The black shows up really well! Even the shadows aren't necessarily pure black which is also a good sign! Overall, the black colour doesn't feel like the void

Incorrect - Black void

Now you might see some highlights, but as you can see those were bright enough to just about survive the solid black colour that this couch has. It also looks a little black-hole-y!

Correct - Just white!

We can easily see the shadows that really makes this sofa! That being, the fabric as well as the way the sewing is done.

Incorrect - Too white

Most of the white colours show up pure white, which as you can see doesn't really work well when displaying the great shadow that this sofa has!

Correct - Good saturation

The colours on the sweater have good saturation and are not too bright, perfect for the game and is pleasing to look at. :)

Incorrect - Too saturated

The colours on this sweater are set at 100% saturation, and while the sections of colour are small, it's still a bit too much for the eye to look at. This also makes details in the cuffs and collar fade, so that it looks more like a block of colour, and not a knit texture.

Correct - Not too saturated

The pink sofa in this example is not overly bright or saturated, and the eye has no trouble looking at it. The details, such as highlights and shadows, the seams, and the texture in the material are all clearly visible. Yay!

Incorrect - Too saturated

The saturation in this example is set far too high, which makes it overwhelm the eye. The texture in a large portion of the material of the sofa is lost, and is more of a block of colour.

Incorrect - Too bright

The brightness settings on this texture are too high, causing the sofa to almost glow. It also makes it difficult to see what the colour is actually supposed to be, and the texture, highlights and shadows are lost or distorted.

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