Dual Dye Channel Feedback

I don't generally post on forums (this is literally my first post ever here), but I was motivated enough that I hope someone might read this and consider it, if people in the community team monitor threads like these... please be kind, I'm not accustomed to publicly voicing my opinions on forums.

As someone who cares a lot about how his character looks, and cares about expression of fashion and coordination, when multiple dye channels being added for older gear was announced, I was ecstatic-- but I've so far been troubled by the implementation. Take the Adventuring Sweater, for instance.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...m/fc7cf521da2/

With the default colors, it has a green shawl over a gray sweater, but when it had a single channel, the entire garment was dyed, the shawl a darker variant and the sweater a lighter one. So naturally, when the dye channel expansion was announced, I expected to be able to dye these elements separately, which I was very excited about!

However, the primary dye channel remains the same, while the second channel dyes the bit of cord on the metallic ornament...

This doesn't augur well to me. There are many sets that dye the entirety of a garment's materials where a split between two channels would give them great additional potential for glamour application (sets like Replica Dreadwyrm, where the leather-look scales and the fabric dye in parallel and make them look cheap, along with most sets from Heavensward which suffer a similar problem). I was looking forward to these sets in particular having their materials separated into individual dye channels.

My hypothesis for why this isn't being done is, the developers may be concerned or sensitive about people who purchased cash shop dyes or rare dyes off the marketboard, and used them on items, only to have the dyes changed-- to this I say, why not have the existing single dye apply to both channels when an item is upgraded from one to two dye channels? Is this a realistic reason to keep a large number of the game's gear pieces, which will be having their textures and mapping upgraded in the upcoming 7.x patches anyway, looking cheap or ugly when dyed?

In my personal experience as a 3D artist, if work is already being done to improve the visual fidelity, it should be a relatively simple matter of creating black-and-white masks for the dye channels on these new high-resolution elements, provided the workflow is similar to the industry standard.

I'm not here to disparage it as "laziness", as work is work, no matter how trivial it would seem, and the undertaking has been enormous this expansion... but while the team is working on the textures and masking for roughness/specularity/metallic/etc, wouldn't it be prudent to consider reworking the dye channels at the same time, instead of simply reusing the existing ones?

Splitting existing channels on items like the Adventuring Sweater would make me very happy!

So many dye channel choices have been... questionable.

Also would it have been too difficult to upp it to 3/4 from the go? Seeing how that's the usual amount of different colors on an outfit.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

So many dye channel choices have been... questionable.

Also would it have been too difficult to upp it to 3/4 from the go? Seeing how that's the usual amount of different colors on an outfit.

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From my experience in texturing, each dye channel map would essentially be an additional map the size of the texture, which could lead to a dramatic increase in the texture memory consumption. There are techniques to mitigate this using nested maps, (where each map uses a different R/G/B/Alpha channel), but whether or not FFXIV's existing code and shaders can be made to work with this specifically for dye channels without a large amount of additional effort, I don't know.

I'd honestly be fine with two, especially if they reworked where the channels fall! It would be even nicer if gear with shared models had different dye channel arrangements (which is already present on some gear, like the Rainbow Shirts versus the Altered Woolen Shirt), but I know this is a big ask when the part of the team handling this already has an enormous amount of work ahead of them.

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Originally Posted by AbrahmEden

From my experience in texturing, each dye channel map would essentially be an additional map the size of the texture, which could lead to a dramatic increase in the texture memory consumption. There are techniques to mitigate this using nested maps, (where each map uses a different R/G/B/Alpha channel), but whether or not FFXIV's existing code and shaders can be made to work with this specifically for dye channels without a large amount of additional effort, I don't know.

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Though i recall stumbling once upon a topic that contained information that the gear we have already have multiple dye channels by default (about 4+). But only 1 were accessible to us. Which wouldn't be too surprising seeing how various armours clearly have had multiple fields that the devs themselves have been tweaking both for player gear and npcs.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Though i recall stumbling once upon a topic that contained information that the gear we have already have multiple dye channels by default (about 4+). But only 1 were accessible to us. Which wouldn't be too surprising seeing how various armours clearly have had multiple fields that the devs themselves have been tweaking both for player gear and npcs.

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If I'm being honest, there are elements from older 1.0 gear I like because the dye channels are so limited-- rather than dyeing the entire garment, it only dyes a small portion, which sometimes leads to greater diversity of color. Less can be more!

I'm reminded of the Edengrace Mail of Maiming, which has a nice lavender accent on the interior of the tails... but when you dye it, the dye channel overwrites it entirely.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...em/eeb12af0cd5

I'd rather have less of the garment dye than have its unique accents completely overridden!

I can only assume that what they did was enable dyes for whatever the second color channel is no matter what it's for. I never learned much about textures when I was learning 3D modeling, but I can't think of how else you'd end up with a piece of gear where the second channel is for the thread on buttons.

https://i.redd.it/eebx24oz8n9d1.jpeg
https://reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/...s_of_a_button/

It does feel to me like they took the path of least resistance for a lot of these items. I was pretty underwhelmed with most of them. I think they ran out of time and wanted to have at least some things with two dye channels on launch? Making a new map for some small detail is probably a lot faster and easier than precision cutting up the existing map to separate it into two parts.

It really feels like they aren't being given the time / staff/ and budget they need to properly work on this game and a lot of things feel like they've been rushed or shortcut instead. So many things just aren't living up to the expectations they set for us.

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Originally Posted by Cheapshot

It does feel to me like they took the path of least resistance for a lot of these items. I was pretty underwhelmed with most of them. I think they ran out of time and wanted to have at least some things with two dye channels on launch? Making a new map for some small detail is probably a lot faster and easier than precision cutting up the existing map to separate it into two parts.

It really feels like they aren't being given the time / staff/ and budget they need to properly work on this game and a lot of things feel like they've been rushed or shortcut instead. So many things just aren't living up to the expectations they set for us.

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Regardless of whether this is the truth or not, various elements are certainly giving that impression, and in business, optics-- the way things look from the outside-- can be just as important as the truth.

Overall, I think quality work is being done, and I can be patient (I was pretty patient for the three years it took to get hrothgar new hairstyles, and endured the whole ears issue). But like issue with hrothgar ears, I'd like to be reassured the team are on the right track with what the community would prefer, and I'm definitely concerned.

The button threads image... that's very disheartening to me.

https://i.imgur.com/9EYRZFH.png

I came across this issue with the Faire Kohakama piece where the ribbon around the ankle isn't dyeing like it did before. I'm hoping that this is an error that will eventually be corrected. Has anyone else found similar issues for other items? I'm curious to see what else was missed.

Yeah, there was a lot of potential with this. Not only did they not really add a whole lot of pieces (all things considered) with the functionality, but the parts that can be changed are a mixed bag at best.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Yeah, there was a lot of potential with this. Not only did they not really add a whole lot of pieces (all things considered) with the functionality, but the parts that can be changed are a mixed bag at best.

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Is true. Mao nots impressed either. Mights as well has been no changes ats all for the little whats was dones.