Helms of Zeus and Tartarus
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-11-29 08:52 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Relax, guys. 
There's every intention to make these fully tintable, with exactly 2 colors that you choose and that's it. But the concept's barely done, and 3D hasn't started yet. Kinda premature to be discussing details of an asset that doesn't exist.
David Nakayama, Lead Concept Artist
COH Concept Art Gallery now open at http://pixelsaurus.deviantart.com/
David, no offense, but with the tinting of a number of pieces in the last few Costume sets (and a vocal number of fourmites not liking it), there's good enough reason to let the Model artists know while the design is still being worked on.
Especially if the items in question are rewards for keeping Subbed through a specific time frame.
Thank you for the time...
@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test) 
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Well in all fairness, things have been trending towards pretinting, and we have to foresee doom to make sure things aren't too far along later to make any changes to it. Besides I need to make sure these helmets are awesome, so I can swap costumes and wear Recluse's helm when I stroll up to him at the end of the Destined One story arcs. Can we get a special dented/damaged version of it, so it'll look more authentic when I show Recluse who's boss? |
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
Relax, guys.
There's every intention to make these fully tintable, with exactly 2 colors that you choose and that's it. But the concept's barely done, and 3D hasn't started yet. Kinda premature to be discussing details of an asset that doesn't exist. |
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That's fair, but I think everyone's already on the same page about this. They know at this point to keep the tinting to a minimum. Certainly I'll be concepting things with a tight focus on 2 colors only, to make it even easier for them.|
Originally Posted by Tymers_Realm
David, no offense, but with the tinting of a number of pieces in the last few Costume sets (and a vocal number of fourmites not liking it), there's good enough reason to let the Model artists know while the design is still being worked on.
Especially if the items in question are rewards for keeping Subbed through a specific time frame. Thank you for the time... |
However, 3D artists are limited to a 2-color system and will, from time to time, need a tint to simulate a third color. I don't foresee that being an issue on these helmets (because they're relatively straightforward chrome), but it's a useful tool and not something they should simply throw away.
David Nakayama, Lead Concept Artist
COH Concept Art Gallery now open at http://pixelsaurus.deviantart.com/
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A couple of rambling and tangential yet related thoughts to throw out there. I'm half-asleep, so the quality of said thoughts is not guaranteed.|
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
That's fair, but I think everyone's already on the same page about this. They know at this point to keep the tinting to a minimum. Certainly I'll be concepting things with a tight focus on 2 colors only, to make it even easier for them.
However, 3D artists are limited to a 2-color system and will, from time to time, need a tint to simulate a third color. I don't foresee that being an issue on these helmets (because they're relatively straightforward chrome), but it's a useful tool and not something they should simply throw away. |
When CGI first came into widespread use in movies, some studios tried to use it to simulate live action movies. Everything was done in CGI, they tried to make the models look like real people, etc. etc.
Failed miserably, since it landed square in the Uncanny Valley. The studios figured out that CGI shouldn't dominate (unless of course you're making a cartoonish movie), but should instead enhance and support the live action. These days most moviegoers barely even notice when CGI has been used. It just works to make the conspicuous visuals of the movie that much better.
In general, probably the wisest proverb that ever came from a TV show: "If you do something right, people won't think you've done anything at all." (Bless you, Futurama.)
To bring this back around to City costume design, the tinting is a potentially useful tool that possibly got a touch overused. You can tell it did because people noticed it and it got in the way of what they wanted to do. If the tinting is used correctly, my expectation is that people will barely even notice it's been used at all; they'll just think the costume piece looks amazing and works wonderfully within their own creations. When they tell it to be primary green and secondary purple, it'll accommodate while still using the tinting to provide a subtle extra effect that makes the piece a quality one.
Standard Code Rant actually applies here because I don't have anywhere near the training or creativity to even know where I would start if I wanted to create costume pieces. I don't know how tough what I just said would actually be to do. But as guiding philosophies for design go, I think it's a useful one to shoot for.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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The only thing you can change on the helmets is the glow of the lights on the helms that have them. The red helms can be approximately matched using other metallic pieces colored red, but the other helms, especially the Crab Spider, are shades that are almost impossible to match with other costume pieces.|
Originally Posted by Sermon
edit: I thought you could color (some of?) the villain helmets. can anyone confirm? I thought I remember changing the "lights" on the wolf helm.
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Anyway, David's posts regarding the plans for the helmets are pretty reassuring. Not to mention i think the other Devs have noticed the subtle hints about how some players feel about precoloured pieces from the responses to the use of precoloured pieces in the last two packs. Three if you count the Celestial Armor pieces.
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They've managed to do tasteful tinting in the past, I remember that much. Where small details of a particular item would be slightly darker, and would sort of combine both colors you chose. I can't name any examples off the top of my head. But now it's more like "Hey, we want this costume part to be brown, so we're making it brown!" To name a few, the Cigarillo, a few GR pieces, and most of the Steampunk pack, including the most guilty costume part the Steampunk Backpack. Put that thing on white/white and you'll get brown/gray.
Then there's the recent issue of making the secondary color affect something pretty unnoticeable. For example, the Barbarian shoulders. Rather than making the first color affect the base and the straps and the second affect the trim for some really nice looking costumes, the first color affects the entire metal plate and the second affects the small straps. Or the Praetorian Police shoulder pads. The first color changes the entire shoulder pad except for a small design. The second color does nothing. That design is permanently gold.
David, don't take offense to some of us being a bit cynical or rude, but dude, something needs to change. And if we don't speak up before work's been done on a piece, then changes will never happen to the costume parts we want to love. The feedback threads get swamped with feedback, and yet costume parts still go live with all the same issues the people complained about.
That and we've heard the "We'll try not doing that in the future" approach before a few times, and we still got the Steampunk pack and Gunslinger pack with all their issues.
There have also been a few issues lately with coloration bleeding into strange locations. Check out the pilgrim hat colored blue:
Basically any primary color applies to the hat, but also multiplies on the hair layer. If you color the hat pure Black, the secondary color (and the stripe on the hat) both change to more or less that color. But if you pick any other primary color than Black, the stripe takes on the secondary color, but the hair is a blend of the primary and secondary color. Hence, in this picture, purple hair from a blue primary and a red secondary color.
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I have a question in regards to that, actually: Is it too much work to provide an alternate, non-tinted version to anything you guys end up having to pre-tint? I was a big opponent to the way Steampunk pieces were pre-coloured, but I actually do very much approve of the compromise on that front, in the sense that the tintable versions of these pieces were really good.
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Originally Posted by Noble Savage
However, 3D artists are limited to a 2-color system and will, from time to time, need a tint to simulate a third color. I don't foresee that being an issue on these helmets (because they're relatively straightforward chrome), but it's a useful tool and not something they should simply throw away.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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There are occasionally things that have to be pre-tinted. The steampunk gloves for girls come to mind. I know that skin counts as a color, so in order to have a fingerless glove with two colors, one has to be pre-determined (in this case, black).|
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
That's fair, but I think everyone's already on the same page about this. They know at this point to keep the tinting to a minimum. Certainly I'll be concepting things with a tight focus on 2 colors only, to make it even easier for them.
However, 3D artists are limited to a 2-color system and will, from time to time, need a tint to simulate a third color. I don't foresee that being an issue on these helmets (because they're relatively straightforward chrome), but it's a useful tool and not something they should simply throw away. |
But sometimes you guys pre-tint things that make no sense and have no need to be tinted. Like the new gunslinger boots for men. There are only two colors visible: the boot, and the sole. And you guys decided to pre-tint the boots for no apparent reason. You can't make them white as a result. The added color makes them come out gray.
Additionally, on the corset for women, you decided to pre-tint the stripes and let us color the strings. That means the stripes have to be two different shades of the same color. No pure black to hide stripes; no black/white. Just black/gray or white/gray. Or red/maroon. Why that decision had to be made I don't know. Why not pre-tint the strings black or white, and let us color the actual corset? The strings will rarely be visible by comparison. Or really, why not give an alternate version if you really think coloring the strings is that important?
(Also on that topic, I want the gunslinger cape apron to have a no stripe option
)I can see why you might want to pre-tint stuff very rarely, but if you do you should really look into adding a second "not tinted" option as Sam said.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Chrome? Does that mean they're going to pick up colors from environmental reflections?|
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
That's fair, but I think everyone's already on the same page about this. They know at this point to keep the tinting to a minimum. Certainly I'll be concepting things with a tight focus on 2 colors only, to make it even easier for them.
However, 3D artists are limited to a 2-color system and will, from time to time, need a tint to simulate a third color. I don't foresee that being an issue on these helmets (because they're relatively straightforward chrome), but it's a useful tool and not something they should simply throw away. |
I don't care about these helmets much at all (helmets in general aren't my style), so it's no skin off my back, but if people hear "no pre-tinting" and then get colors from the environment changing the colors they chose in character creation, they're probably not going to be happy. When people ask that you don't pre-tint, it's because they want to choose the colors that appear on their costumes. If they try to make a gold Statesman helm and it looks green half the time in-game because of environmental reflections, they're likely to feel the same way about it as if it had been pre-tinted.
Thanks for listening to feedback on this, David, especially now before the parts are finalized.
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I think this is intentional. Since there are only two tones, they have to make those cover the hair. It can be limiting, but currently there is no point of reference for hair color while wearing a hat. Instead of fixing the hair color (to, say, blond) they make the hair color a mix of the two hat colors. It is somewhat limiting, but I would say less so then giving us a hat with the hair color already chosen. Alternatively, they could have made the secondary color affect the hair only, and have the belt portion of the hat uncolorable (say, black). I would probably have preferred that option.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Basically any primary color applies to the hat, but also multiplies on the hair layer. If you color the hat pure Black, the secondary color (and the stripe on the hat) both change to more or less that color. But if you pick any other primary color than Black, the stripe takes on the secondary color, but the hair is a blend of the primary and secondary color. Hence, in this picture, purple hair from a blue primary and a red secondary color.
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edit: I wonder if they could every have a secondary option which lets you switch between, option 1, a blended hair with colorable hat-belt, or, option 2, preset hat-belt with secondary color hair.
Sermon
@sermon
One of Six, Cannibal 6
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I'm sorry if I was misinterpreting things, but I was under the impression that our costume pieces actually had four colors, two of which could be modified by the player. That's why the toga from the Valentine's event has two adjustable colors, but will always have the golden-colored embroided edge, for example.|
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
However, 3D artists are limited to a 2-color system and will, from time to time, need a tint to simulate a third color.
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So, if they really need a third color, couldn't they just use one of the two extra colors?
10joy
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I *think* this is what you guys are asking us to avoid, correct? It seems like you don't want any part of any piece locked into a specific color, right?
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Originally Posted by Tenjoy
I'm sorry if I was misinterpreting things, but I was under the impression that our costume pieces actually had four colors, two of which could be modified by the player. That's why the toga from the Valentine's event has two adjustable colors, but will always have the golden-colored embroided edge, for example.
So, if they really need a third color, couldn't they just use one of the two extra colors? 10joy |
David Nakayama, Lead Concept Artist
COH Concept Art Gallery now open at http://pixelsaurus.deviantart.com/
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Originally Posted by Noble Savage
I *think* this is what you guys are asking us to avoid, correct? It seems like you don't want any part of any piece locked into a specific color, right?
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That and pieces having a pre colouring.
For example if a player tries to turn the celestial set black, well they don't get black.
Same with some of the gunslinger parts, they are grey when you try to have white, and it mucks the other colours up as well, making it hard to match colours with pieces from different sets.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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As seen in the concept, these are meant to be shiny metal helms, so it'd be crazy not to use realistic cubemap reflection on them. Dull, non-reflective surfaces would be far less cool. That said, the artists have control over how mirror-like the surface is, and as long as it's dialed down to a reasonalble degree (I dunno, like 20%), it'll still clearly show of it's embedded color and still look nice and shiny. There's a sweet spot between too reflective and not reflective enough, and the goal's obviously to hit that mark.
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Originally Posted by Liquid
Chrome? Does that mean they're going to pick up colors from environmental reflections?
I don't care about these helmets much at all (helmets in general aren't my style), so it's no skin off my back, but if people hear "no pre-tinting" and then get colors from the environment changing the colors they chose in character creation, they're probably not going to be happy. When people ask that you don't pre-tint, it's because they want to choose the colors that appear on their costumes. If they try to make a gold Statesman helm and it looks green half the time in-game because of environmental reflections, they're likely to feel the same way about it as if it had been pre-tinted. Thanks for listening to feedback on this, David, especially now before the parts are finalized. |
David Nakayama, Lead Concept Artist
COH Concept Art Gallery now open at http://pixelsaurus.deviantart.com/
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Yes. |
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
I *think* this is what you guys are asking us to avoid, correct? It seems like you don't want any part of any piece locked into a specific color, right?
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Those Praetorian Police (?) shoulder pads with the yellow stripe baked in? Hate 'em with a passion. I've tried to use them on several characters, but that yellow stripe always ruins it. The Steampunk backpack that's pretinted that brassy brown? Hate it (although not as much as the yellow lines). The Gunslinger bustle with the stripes baked in? I'm starting to get the same feeling, because that piece would be so useful if it wasn't stripes all the time.
I don't mind (so much) having the two colors that we choose blend to create a third color, so long as I'm in control of what the colors are. But the moment you guys choose a color for us, whether it's through pre-tinting (like the Steampunk stuff), or just completely baked in and unchangeable (like the Praetorian shoulders), you make it much harder to use the pieces in creative ways.
d
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Can't speak for anyone else, but that's not the issue that I'm talking about. At least, it's not the main issue. The main issue is that some costume pieces have some sort of preset base color (trying to simulate textures?) that influences all the colors you put over it. This creates issues if you try to match colors across your costumes. Selecting the same color from the color field on 2 different costume pieces will result in 2 different tints of that color on the 2 costume pieces.
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Originally Posted by Noble Savage
I *think* this is what you guys are asking us to avoid, correct? It seems like you don't want any part of any piece locked into a specific color, right?
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@True Metal
Co-leader of Callous Crew SG. Based on Union server.
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This is a very crucial part. We don't just want a piece to not have specific hue baked into it, we also want the colours we pick for it to be the same on the costume as they are in the colour palette. What this means is we don't want a piece's base texture to cause selected colours to wash out or not apply fully. Don't mess with colour saturation and luminance, if possible.|
Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
That and pieces having a pre colouring.
For example if a player tries to turn the celestial set black, well they don't get black. Same with some of the gunslinger parts, they are grey when you try to have white, and it mucks the other colours up as well, making it hard to match colours with pieces from different sets. |
Right now, the Celestial pieces look very good, but their base texture is horrible. If you colour it anything other than white (which is what I think it was designed to be), then you don't get the colour you wanted. If you pick black, you get a medium grey. If you pick a saturated blue, you get a white-washed blue. If you pick a red, you get a kind of pink. If you pick gold, you get rust. Not only do those colours look really bad on the costume, they also fail to match any other piece in the entire game BUT other Celestial pieces.
One day I took a screenshot of the colour palette we have access to and sampled all of its colours. Generally speaking, we mostly control Hue (row) and Saturation (column), with only the last two or three colours being of a variable, low luminance. When a costume piece kills the luminance on the colours you give it, yet you have no control of the luminance of the colours of your other costume piece, you simply cannot match that piece to any of the others.
I shouldn't be put in a position where I have to read up on colour theory just to figure out how to match my chest piece to my shoulders, only to find out I pretty much can't.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Total tangent: Can there be a full-body outfit that's just unpatterned tights with the reflection dialed up to 100%? Because that would be awesome.
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Originally Posted by Noble Savage
As seen in the concept, these are meant to be shiny metal helms, so it'd be crazy not to use realistic cubemap reflection on them. Dull, non-reflective surfaces would be far less cool. That said, the artists have control over how mirror-like the surface is, and as long as it's dialed down to a reasonalble degree (I dunno, like 20%), it'll still clearly show of it's embedded color and still look nice and shiny. There's a sweet spot between too reflective and not reflective enough, and the goal's obviously to hit that mark.
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Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that they should be dull and non-reflective. I'm just saying that when they reflect color, it looks ugly on non-greyscale color choices for the costume item, because it distorts the chosen color, the best example being the green that comes out if you choose a yellow tone.|
Originally Posted by Noble Savage
As seen in the concept, these are meant to be shiny metal helms, so it'd be crazy not to use realistic cubemap reflection on them. Dull, non-reflective surfaces would be far less cool.
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This is something I should have said in our earlier discussion about the Metallic Tights option (I think someone else may have mentioned it off-hand somewhere else, though): cars have reflective surfaces, but the paint doesn't discolor like some reflective costume pieces currently in-game. You can paint a car a yellow-gold, and it won't look green on a clear day due to reflecting the color of the sky, but you can still see reflections in the car's surface. You may disagree, but I prefer that sort of reflectiveness on colorable pieces, and based on the response to pre-tinting of recent pieces and how it keeps pieces from matching other costume pieces, I think a lot of other players will agree.
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| That said, the artists have control over how mirror-like the surface is, and as long as it's dialed down to a reasonalble degree (I dunno, like 20%), it'll still clearly show of it's embedded color and still look nice and shiny. There's a sweet spot between too reflective and not reflective enough, and the goal's obviously to hit that mark. |
Thanks for the response.
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We tried that for fun once, and it's not awesome. |
Originally Posted by MagicFlyingHippy
Total tangent: Can there be a full-body outfit that's just unpatterned tights with the reflection dialed up to 100%? Because that would be awesome.
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The Metallic set is about as reflective as we want to get--any more and it starts to look unrealistic. And I think that's only dialed up to around 50% or something.
David Nakayama, Lead Concept Artist
COH Concept Art Gallery now open at http://pixelsaurus.deviantart.com/
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Originally Posted by Noble Savage
As seen in the concept, these are meant to be shiny metal helms, so it'd be crazy not to use realistic cubemap reflection on them. Dull, non-reflective surfaces would be far less cool. That said, the artists have control over how mirror-like the surface is, and as long as it's dialed down to a reasonalble degree (I dunno, like 20%), it'll still clearly show of it's embedded color and still look nice and shiny. There's a sweet spot between too reflective and not reflective enough, and the goal's obviously to hit that mark.
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This might be greedy of me, but can we have both, can we have a metal one and a dull version of these pieces?
The dull one would work so much better with older parts, plus it could stand in for plastic, painted wood etc for concepts.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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Originally Posted by Noble Savage
I *think* this is what you guys are asking us to avoid, correct? It seems like you don't want any part of any piece locked into a specific color, right?
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Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
That and pieces having a pre colouring.
For example if a player tries to turn the celestial set black, well they don't get black. Same with some of the gunslinger parts, they are grey when you try to have white, and it mucks the other colours up as well, making it hard to match colours with pieces from different sets. |
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Originally Posted by TrueMetal
Can't speak for anyone else, but that's not the issue that I'm talking about. At least, it's not the main issue. The main issue is that some costume pieces have some sort of preset base color (trying to simulate textures?) that influences all the colors you put over it. This creates issues if you try to match colors across your costumes. Selecting the same color from the color field on 2 different costume pieces will result in 2 different tints of that color on the 2 costume pieces.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
This is a very crucial part. We don't just want a piece to not have specific hue baked into it, we also want the colours we pick for it to be the same on the costume as they are in the colour palette. What this means is we don't want a piece's base texture to cause selected colours to wash out or not apply fully. Don't mess with colour saturation and luminance, if possible.
Right now, the Celestial pieces look very good, but their base texture is horrible. If you colour it anything other than white (which is what I think it was designed to be), then you don't get the colour you wanted. If you pick black, you get a medium grey. If you pick a saturated blue, you get a white-washed blue. If you pick a red, you get a kind of pink. If you pick gold, you get rust. Not only do those colours look really bad on the costume, they also fail to match any other piece in the entire game BUT other Celestial pieces. One day I took a screenshot of the colour palette we have access to and sampled all of its colours. Generally speaking, we mostly control Hue (row) and Saturation (column), with only the last two or three colours being of a variable, low luminance. When a costume piece kills the luminance on the colours you give it, yet you have no control of the luminance of the colours of your other costume piece, you simply cannot match that piece to any of the others. I shouldn't be put in a position where I have to read up on colour theory just to figure out how to match my chest piece to my shoulders, only to find out I pretty much can't. |
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