Colorable Items (Explained!)

[MetalBreaker]

This thread is not like the ones "I want colorable items, IMPLEMENT THAT INTO THE GAME!". Slow down, slow down. In this thread, I will make a deep explanation of how could colorable items work in stock KSP.

First, modder-friendly guide (I'm a modder myself too, I just don't publish my mods):

Texture suffixes:

_me = Mask / Emmisive (Colorable)

_ns = Normal / Specular (Normal Map (Not grayscale bump map!))

_de = Diffuse / Emmisive (Non-colorable)

An Mask / Emmisive (_me) defines the model's colorability using the Alpha channel and the main layer (Background in most cases, basically the layer where you paint your texture on). On Alpha channel you would put the following colors (hexcodes):

Non-colorable: #9f9f9f

Colorable: #898989

Basically, your Alpha channel would have the same layout as your layer where you paint the texture on, but for the colors you usually put, you would put the colors above for colorability or non-colorability. For example, I paint the texture of my Gas Tank, I painted the background layer, now the only thing left is to define colorability or non-colorability. I would just normally paint the whole alpha channel with the colorable color because I want my whole model to be colorable, but for people who don't want their whole model colorable, they would just paint the part they don't want to be colored with the non-colorable color. Now, let's move on to the Background layer defining colorability or non-colorability.

For the background layer, you could just paint it the way you usually do but I suggest this color (hexcode):

#8f1c68

That color is basically gonna show the EXACT same color you painted it on the painting GUI ingame. For regular colors it would just change the color you painted on the background layer by adding the color you selected's RGB and hue values to the RGB and hue values you originally painted on your model. If you don't really want to use the color I suggested, you could use the shades of that color to get a bit different color between parts. Let's move on to normal maps.

Normal maps could be generated by NVIDIA's photoshop tools normal map filter. It's background layer would be the normal map the NVIDIA Normal Map filter generated, but the alpha channel would contain the model's actual shinyness. You could put any shade from black to white (only neutral colors!) there to define the object's actual shine, but not glow. Let's move on to Diffuse / Emmisive.

Diffuse / Emmisive is a model texture that you usually paint. It's alpha channel defines the model's shinyness (but not glow), but it's normal map still needs an alpha channel that defines the model's shinyness to be a normal map after all. It's basically an UVW unwrap of your model that you paint and an alpha channel where you customize your model's shinyness.

For non-modders: This tutorial (that will JUST MAYBE apply in the future) is too complicated for you

I hope Squad really takes my request, even though this is complicated. Quite a few games already use this method, so modders that mod those games should easily mod KSP.

[MetalBreaker]

-BUMP-

I hope this thread really gets some attention because I really feel like nobody is interested.

[Whirligig Girl]

The problem is that it's not very well explained, and it talks about colors without using them. I just skimmed through it, confused, and left.