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In its current form, the Color Manager lacks many features and details needed on this kind of tool. The following picture portrays the additions and changes of which current iteration of the Color Manager would massively benefit from:

I figured out how to use the color tool to select colors for my rockets. However, I would like to take the paint off completely, to have a shiny polished aluminum exterior for some of my rockets. Can anyone offer tips for making my rocket exteriors shiny aluminum? I really like the ability to customize part colors so thoroughly, that is a fantastic tool. Just haven't figured out how to strip the paint off when I want to go that route.

I would love to have the reflective stainless steel look of the SpaceX starship in the game. Implementing that would be quite easy, as the "textures unlimited" package shows, simply set all surfaces except windows to full reflection. It looks cool and would add a completely new look to parts without any additional design work. Here is a look at a plane of mine in stainless steel:

Let me ask you - what do you think of the stock planets? If I was to answer my own question, I would (constructively, of course!) say that they're... Not exactly in tip top condition. There are many things that can be improved about them, such as the actual terrain, the detail or how Gilly and bop look like mud balls instead of asteroids. However this isn't just about Gilly or bop. This thread is about how badly the planets need a makeover. As some of you may know, I'm a planet modder. I make planets. Now put into perspective, I would like to compare Kerbin (and also duna) with a planet I created. The reason why I am comparing two planets is because squad didn't actually 'make' kerbin. Kerbin's colour texture comes from the Libnoise first example, not squad. Now then. Assuming that duna was created by a much more skilled creator than myself, with more experience, qualifications and is employed to do exactly this sort of work, why am I able to do better using paint and Microsoft word. I'm not joking. I made a relatively decent planet with two free programs in 2 hours. I'm not tooting my own horn or saying that squad is lazy or bad, I'm saying they could do much, much better. I shall elaborate. Planets consist of three textures - a height, normal and colour map. The normal map is generated from the completed heightmap. The other two are created manually. I created the height map with Paint and Paint alone. No filters, no layer system. I just used a paint brush and drew on my texture. Squad would likely use Photoshop, or gimp at the least to make their planets. Maybe even a professional drawing program. They'd certainly not fire up paint and set to work. The colour map, admittedly, was created with Adobe After Effects, however this exact effect can also be achieved using the planet config, albeit it is more time consuming. Here is the video where I create the planet, then I'll talk about my next point. Now, by no means am I trying to show off. That is not the purpose of this thread at all. If I can make a planet which looks arguably just as good, if not better than kerbin in 2 hours, squad can do the same with their professional tools and heightened knowledge of the game. "But Linx, the planets do not have to look good, they just have to be there for us to land on" Alright, so who goes to duna and says "actually yeah, this is a good spot I'll visit again! I love the terrain here, the colour and detail is simply breathtaking. I love this planet!" Right. Barely anyone. Because duna is just bump after bump with no variation at all except for the poles. Not to mention that most of the bumps are procedural and not textured, which is just as easy to accomplish (as I used procedural noise mods on my planet, too) Now then, duna is not a particularly interesting planet with much diversity except for the poles being the only difference. I would love for duna to have more colour variation, more evidence of previous water (assuming it is a Mars analogue), more pronounced terrain variation such as mountains, small cracks and such. The same goes for other planets like Dres and tylo. They don't really look very interesting or worth exploring as they have no canyons (Dres has one, but nothing more) or defined mountains. Even Jool needs a facelift! I'd love to also see more craters or evidence of past activity on the planets and moons to make them more diverse and interesting, not to mention that squad MUST rely less on procedural noise mods, as they make the planets and moons incredibly "samey". A balance must be achieved and at the moment, we can be safe to say that the planets are a really weak point in the game, especially since they're supposed to be a substantial goal within the game's progression. I'd like to hear your view on this situation. - Linx.

Taking a step back from the "Basic Parts" tutorial which makes the assumption that I wish to add new parts... Is anyone else doing anything with just painting the existing parts by modifying the .dde texture files? It seems apparent to me that I'm coloring something (a texture file) maybe not meant to be colored? ...and wondering if I'm taking the wrong approach or if this is frowned upon as infringing on other people's work? I like to work with the stock parts... but had this idea for a cute Green Cherubs flight team and just had to paint them accordingly. I would like to release a mod for my Green Cherubs flight team which is basically just repainting the stock parts, but I also don't want to offend the Squad devs and/or original authors (PorkJet, NovaSilisko) by releasing a mod that is just their parts with a painted .dde file. Any thoughts? I have not tried to reverse-engineer my way back thru Unity by attempting to reload a .mu file, not even sure if that's possible? Anyone know if the underlying parts already allow for a base color layer? ...if I could get the mesh outline of the part file that would be wonderful. My preference would be to have a clean color map layer for livery and leave the texture file either untouched or maybe polished up a bit for a glossier airshow finish. This is basically what I'm doing: