dye request - spriggan black

[Gemina]

While wearing the Spriggan Cap, any black seems grey!

That would be because black is binary and not a true color. Multiple shades of black does not exist. Asking for Spriggan black is basically asking for another Jet black, which depending on what is being dyed, also isn't true black. The dark divinity gear set is one of the few sets that are truly black. That shizz is so black it absorbs light.

[Shibi]

Multiple shades of black does not exist.

I see you did science in school, not art. Black is a colour when you are painting or using dye, to obtain it you need to mix all the three primaries. A little less of one of the three primaries gives a "shade of black" like onyx or licorice.

As the request is for a dye... black will be a colour, and it can have shades.

(artistically, bumpmap and specular on armour is going to make the purest black nigh on hard/impossible to be standard - it will work on some things, not others).

[Gemina]

I see you did science in school, not art. Black is a colour when you are painting or using dye, to obtain it you need to mix all the three primaries. A little less of one of the three primaries gives a "shade of black" like onyx or licorice.

As the request is for a dye... black will be a colour, and it can have shades.

(artistically, bumpmap and specular on armour is going to make the purest black nigh on hard/impossible to be standard - it will work on some things, not others).

Well yeah, I can actually use science. With science you learn that the color spectrum is far more vast than what the human eye is capable of perceiving, and color can exist where we normally would see nothing but black, but I digress. It was in art class that I was taught how black is used and how to create it, and it was in science that I learned that black is either devoid of color and light, or it completely absorbs both. In other words, if you can 'see' a shade of black, you're not seeing black at all. Black is what the eye interprets when there is no color, or no light to reflect it.

So yeah, grey. Or is it gray? hmmm

[TheMightyMollusk]

So yeah, grey. Or is it gray? hmmm

Outside of very specific contexts, it literally does not matter.

[yotsuffy]

A little science by a noob (me):

A color is what our brain tells us when it combines the amount of light our eyes receive through their blue, green, and red receptors.

White, for example, does not exist. Our brain gives it to us as a combination of what it receives from receptors in our eyes. We "see" white because our brain invents it as a combination.

Black is what our brain gives us as a combination when it receives nothing from the blue, green and red receptors in our eyes. The black spriggan is this one. Not a very limited amount of colors that make for a very dark color. A total absence of blue, green, red which makes our brain tell us: "ok, nothing to see!".

In HTML, black corresponds to # 000000. No blue, no green, no red.

An area dyed in spriggan black is an area that neither emits nor reflects back any light. No matter the fabric, wood, dyed metal, it is BLACK.

Any reflection or shine effect could only be due to a varnish or any other surface treatment which would be applied over the black and which would interfere with the surrounding light before the black absorbs it. Not the dyed surface.

Spriggan black

[Seraphor]

A little science by a noob (me):

A color is what our brain tells us when it combines the amount of light our eyes receive through their blue, green, and red receptors.

White, for example, does not exist. Our brain gives it to us as a combination of what it receives from receptors in our eyes. We "see" white because our brain invents it as a combination.

Black is what our brain gives us as a combination when it receives nothing from the blue, green and red receptors in our eyes. The black spriggan is this one. Not a very limited amount of colors that make for a very dark color. A total absence of blue, green, red which makes our brain tell us: "ok, nothing to see!".

In HTML, black corresponds to # 000000. No blue, no green, no red.

An area dyed in spriggan black is an area that neither emits nor reflects back any light. No matter the fabric, wood, dyed metal, it is BLACK.

Any reflection or shine effect could only be due to a varnish or any other surface treatment which would be applied over the black and which would interfere with the surrounding light before the black absorbs it. Not the dyed surface.

Spriggan black

You've actually explained here why Jet Black doesn't present as "Spriggan Black" despite being as black as you can get.
Simply, the texture and therefore the pattern and amount of 'shine' of a piece of equipment is separate to it's colour component, separate to the dye.
The reason clothes dyed Jet Black look grey compared to the Spriggan hat, is because they have texture, the Spriggan hat does not.

They probably can't make a dye any blacker, because dyes don't alter an items texture.

[yotsuffy]

You've actually explained here why Jet Black doesn't present as "Spriggan Black" despite being as black as you can get.
Simply, the texture and therefore the pattern and amount of 'shine' of a piece of equipment is separate to it's colour component, separate to the dye.
The reason clothes dyed Jet Black look grey compared to the Spriggan hat, is because they have texture, the Spriggan hat does not.

They probably can't make a dye any blacker, because dyes don't alter an items texture.

Jet Black is not black. It is very dark, but it is Jet black, not black; not a true lightless black:

Information about Jet Black / #0A0A0A

In a RGB color space (made from three colored lights for red, green, and blue), hex #0A0A0A is made of 3.9% red, 3.9% green and 3.9% blue. In a CMYK color space (also known as process color, or four color, and used in color printing), hex #0A0A0A is made of 0% cyan, 0% magenta, 0% yellow and 96% black. Jet Black has a hue angle of 0 degrees, a saturation of 0% and a lightness of 3.9%.
Color conversion

The hexadecimal color #0A0A0A has RGB values of R: 3.9, G: 3.9, B: 3.9 and CMYK values of C: 0, M: 0, Y: 0, K:0.96.

IRL, Jet black might be considered black because, IRL, we don't have black dye. Jet is the blackest dye we can get. So far so close.
But Jet black still bounces back some light and makes the fabric, wood, dyed metal it's applied to have a visible effect.

FFXIV being a video game, it doesn't have the IRL boundaries.
Jet Black (#0A0A0A) and Black (#000000) are both doable. And different.
And FFXIV being a video game, it doesn't have the IRL boundaries. If you want a true black you can have it. See the Spriggan Cap.

Spriggan Black FTW!

[Iscah]

Jet Black is not black. It is very dark, but it is Jet black, not black; not a true lightless black:

Jet black is black. It is within the range of sufficiently dark greys that the average human considers to be "blacks" even if they are not absolute, lightless, nonreflective black.

There's also no guarantee that FFXIV "jet black" is strictly hexadecimal "jet black" because that's also simply a term that someone might use to describe something that is a very dark black.

And even if you could colour an object perfectly black, unless it is designed with a particular texture that prevents any reflection of light, then it will still not look lightless to an observer.

For whatever reason, the spriggan cap (and presumably spriggans themselves) has been given this lightless texture - perhaps the game can't handle calculating light and shadow over something so spiky-furry and/or there's some kind of visual illusion going on to make them work properly.

I doubt that you could simply apply #000000 black to a normal gear piece and have it look lightless like the cap. It would still be subject to light and shadow.

[Seraphor]

Jet Black is not black. It is very dark, but it is Jet black, not black; not a true lightless black:



IRL, Jet black might be considered black because, IRL, we don't have black dye. Jet is the blackest dye we can get. So far so close.
But Jet black still bounces back some light and makes the fabric, wood, dyed metal it's applied to have a visible effect.

FFXIV being a video game, it doesn't have the IRL boundaries.
Jet Black (#0A0A0A) and Black (#000000) are both doable. And different.
And FFXIV being a video game, it doesn't have the IRL boundaries. If you want a true black you can have it. See the Spriggan Cap.

Spriggan Black FTW!

You are right, in game has entirely different properties than real life, and that's exactly my point.
Simply adjusting the colour to #000000 won't eliminate texture and reflection, because those are separate distinct factors to colour, overlaid.
The black of the Spriggan hat is due to both #000000 AND a complete lack of texture/reflection.

The dye system doesn't allow for removing texture/reflection components. Hence why dyes can look completely different from one piece of equipment to the next.

As a side topic, you should look up 'Vanta Black'. There is a real life black dye that is virtually free of reflection.
The consequence of this however is that is absorbs so much heat you have to be very careful what you apply it to. For example if you painted the bottom of a pool with it, it would boil and vaporise the water within minutes, and release toxic chorine gas. And the patent for it is owned by a very petty and spiteful man.

[tdb]

Since we're getting all sciency here, I'd like to point out that even if you simulate true blackness within the game's graphics engine, what reaches your eyes is still not true black because your monitor is incapable of producing that. LCD panels have a fairly substantial amount of light bleeding through "black" pixels. OLED is better and can actually turn its pixels off completely, but there's still reflections from the environment.

What actually matters here is how the color is perceived. And the human senses can be fooled in many ways. For instance the screen in my home theater is actually closer to white when observed in normal lighting. But when I turn off the lights and start a movie, I perceive black parts of the image as black because they're so much darker than the bright parts. I can see that the velvet lining around the screen is an even darker black, but that doesn't prevent me from perceiving parts of the image as black.

The consequence of this however is that is absorbs so much heat you have to be very careful what you apply it to. For example if you painted the bottom of a pool with it, it would boil and vaporise the water within minutes, and release toxic chorine gas. And the patent for it is owned by a very petty and spiteful man.

That seems unlikely. Even a small pool has at least a few cubic metres of water, perhaps around 10. Water's heat capacity is about 4.2 kJ/kg°C; furthermore, boiling water requires another 2.26 MJ/kg. To heat up our 10 m³ pool from 20 °C to 100 °C and boil it away would take 26 GJ of energy. Such a pool might have a submerged surface area of 10-20 m² depending on how deep it is. Direct sunlight at sea level provides energy at a rate of about 1050 W/m², so if all of that energy is absorbed into the pool it's heated with a power of about 20 kW. At that power it would take just over two weeks to completely boil away the pool. And that's assuming the sun was directly overhead on a cloudless sky 24 hours a day, and also ignoring any heat transferred from the pool to the surrounding ground or air.

A small kids' pool with 200 liters of water would take almost a week to completely boil, because as you reduce the amount of water the surface area inevitably is reduced too (unless you're willing to call a 1 cm layer of water a "pool"). Even a small glass of water would take over an hour.

Furthermore, a typical black paint absorbs around 90% of all incoming light, so Vantablack causes only about 10% more heat.