Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback All BG3 Heads Shown Together (visual)

I guess I'll have to take it from the lack of commentary that the presentation was just that stunning? lol

I think I'll now use this thread to just say everything I have to say, rather than scattering it piecemeal across multiple threads. I want to talk about hair and makeup and such eventually, but before going there a brief digression about color.

I'd like to talk for a second about the color palette itself, or rather the color swatches available to us in Character Creation (esp. when you click the "show all colors" tick box next to whatever field skin, hair, makeup etc.) A roundabout way of discussing why I'm not a huge fan of the current naming conventions there. First a quick primer. 

This may be pretty familiar to anyone who's ever changed the ink in their printer, or played with a projector or their computer monitor, but just in case... In design we typically talk about color as being Additive Color (RGB), or Subtractive Color (CMYK). The former we tend to think about in terms of projected light and screens, the latter in terms of pigment and print media. Here's a simple example to show the distinction from the wiki, you've probably run across something like this before, and there are some nicer examples if you simply search google, but these were free hehe. You can see how they relate in terms of the secondaries (where the ven diagram merges) and where they differ (at the center.)


The K in CMYK stands for "Key" which is typically referred to as Black, or more accurately "Imperfect Black", or sometimes "Perfect Gray." 

Essentially the K determines the Value scale, or the relative darkness or lightness of the final color. This is often called vibrance or luminosity when discussing specific colors in relation to each other, or simply saturation. In pigment Tints describe lightened colors (mixed with white), Shades describe darkened colors (mixed with black), and Tones describe the midranges (mixed with true gray.) You can think of Value as how the color would present if you made it grayscale.

Hue describes what's going on absent that Value information. Hue simply means "color" in Old English via Norse, but has been adapted to a more specific usage these days. Basically Hue is "the color" as it presents across the whole range of potential values. Again an example from the wiki, where the Value is constant (midrange) and only the Hue changes. 


When printing in CMY (on white paper) the Key has to be provided in pigment (hence the black K in the ink cartridge), whereas with projected light in RGB this attribute is supplied by the surface of the object being illuminated. In CMY when the pigments are mixed you get muddy gray, and the value can then be 'darkened' further by the addition of Black. True Black (i.e. no reflected light) is virtually impossible to achieve in pigment, hence the use of terms like imperfect black or perfect grey (basically as far as one can get in shade given the limits of physics and the materials being used.) 

In an RGB color scheme, modern usage often describes the various colors in what's called Hexadecimal or HEX code. There is a broader range of colors available in HEX than there is in CMYK, which you may have noticed anytime you attempted to print an image only to find that it looks rather different on the page than it did on your screen. This is why printers often have to translate from HEX into something they can use, CMYK percentages or a matching scheme like Pantone (invented in the 1950s for this purpose). 

So why does any of this matter? I'd argue that the palette we have in use currently assumes an RGB type overlay with projection, but where we don't have an underlying set Value or set hue which is constant, and which uses a naming convention more familiar from working with pigment rather than light, when clearly the later is what we're doing when we make a selection.

In the many heads above you can see where subtle variations in Hue or Value occur when comparing individual heads. For example Elf head 1 has a different base Value and Hue than Elf head 5. This also happens with the different sets, the Githyanki heads all have a different base Value and Hue than the Elves and so on. In practical terms this means that if you want those heads to end up looking the same, you have to select a different swatch. I didn't do that above, because I wanted to show the baked-in differences, but you have to re-key stuff if the goal is to see each head using the exact same "color." 

The color impression is further complicated by the fact that the lighting conditions are outside of our control. The intensity of the lighting changes based on where the camera is and how far the model is from the main light source (upper left.) The issue is compounded, because we see the model is presented in-scene. That background has a lot of cyan in it. We're looking at the sky and at the mountains in atmospheric perspective (e.g objects in the distance become more blue the further they are away from us, like reality, or like a DaVinci painting) so this all combines to present a rather restricted impression. The color you choose here will look different, than it will look in-scene on the Nautiloid, where the lighting conditions are completely different.

This would only be a minor annoyance, if it weren't for the fact that once the game is launched we cannot alter anything. We have to prognosticate in advance, without knowing whether we'll like the final results, or if they'll end up say way too dark or way too light, too red or too blue for our tastes etc. once we're off to the races. 

It is impossible to perceive color in isolation. We only see color along a continuum relative to the other colors that surround it. You can see this effect in operation if you look at painting painted with a limited palette. You can make 50% grey look like it's Blue if you put in a scene that is mainly Yellow Ochre. This was common practice when painters had to crush a precious stone to create lapis lazuli, and when only popes and kings got to be decked out in blue hehe. Look up  "the Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt for another example. There is virtually no blue anywhere in that painting. It's all grays. But they look blue, because of the cooling effect when placed in opposition to ochres and reds. The same sort of thing happens here in BG3 during character creation, where our impression is distorted based on the scene and what's around us.

Just something to keep in mind while we evaluate the palette swatches below...

Skin


Hair

Eyes

Tattoo and Makeup

First thing you'll notice is that the swatches are not organized in terms of Value or Hue at all, but instead just sort of randomly distributed without any clear grouping. Sure it looks kind of nice as a mosaic, but it isn't particularly convenient for a comparative evaluation. You have do a jump down and over or back up again, if trying to get an actual gradient. You'll also notice that instead of allowing a more fully realized palette for everything, they get more restricted the further down the categories you go.

When the skin tone palette is totally desaturated, you can see that it's pretty all over the place. This isn't just nitpicking, using such a random scheme makes it more difficult for the end user to find the combination they're after. It also makes it more difficult for people who suffer from various forms of colorblindness to parse what's going on. I'm not colorblind myself, but it is very common, and typically people who have RG or GB colorblindness, will instead key off Value or Texture/Pattern to get their bearings. I think right now the palette, similar to the head morphology, is intentionally obfuscating. Meaning it's presented in such a way to present faux variety, or an impression of many different options by being disorganized and forcing the playing to skip around. Muddying the waters to make them appear deeper as it were.

I'd be curious to here if anyone else has this feeling? Or if others are experiencing a similar frustration? lol

ps. the image attachment rescaling and compression on these boards is slightly maddening hehe. I tried to clean it up the best I could, but the forums just tend to do what they want. Sometimes it upscales sometimes it downscales, and I haven't been able to determine why or when, but at least gives a sense.