dye request - spriggan black

[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.

[Gemina]

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.

To add further, I don't think we could create true black anymore than we could achieve absolute zero in temperature. Though the latter is a condition (or lack of them), true black is a perception. It's absolute nothingness. Much like how your eyes perceive your home theater screen, the mountains by where I live disappear everyday with the setting of the sun. Mountains as we all know, are enormous. They are full of life and color, and as the sun sets, they become a silhouette of their former selves, and eventually they fade away completely as if they are not there at all. But they are there, they did not vanish into thin air; it's just that my eyes can no longer perceive them, and the image 'fades to black'. When you think about black in this manner, it really makes you wonder what is out there in the deepness of the oceans, and the vastness of outer space.

The pool example you quoted is also interesting. I am not a science guru, and you already took things beyond my own comprehension, but I do wonder about if we painted the entire bottom of an Olympic-sized pool as close to black as we could get, exactly how much energy would it absorb from the sun? This is of course before it is filled with water, but the blacker it is, the hotter it is going to get; eventually becoming a giant frying pan. At a certain point and ignoring any leidenfrost effect, it would become increasingly difficult to even put water into the pool without instantly vaporizing it. The water that can remain would come to a boil pretty close to immediately.

[tdb]

The pool example you quoted is also interesting. I am not a science guru, and you already took things beyond my own comprehension, but I do wonder about if we painted the entire bottom of an Olympic-sized pool as close to black as we could get, exactly how much energy would it absorb from the sun?

An olympic size swimming pool is 50 by 25 metres, so it has an area of about 1250 square metres. If painted a perfect black and with sun shining from directly overhead, it would absorb around 1.3 megawatts of power. Examples of things with the same magnitude of power: a small locomotive, a medium-sized data center or about three 18-wheelers.

This is of course before it is filled with water, but the blacker it is, the hotter it is going to get; eventually becoming a giant frying pan.

There's actually a limit to how hot it can get. The hotter it is, the more heat will be radiated into the air (and eventually space) as well as conducted into the ground. I did some calculations and it looks like it could reach around 100 °C over typical ambient temperature, but not much more than that. A higher ambient temperature makes the gap somewhat narrower because thermal radiation follows a quartic law. Still, you'd have an easier time frying things in California than Greenland.

At a certain point and ignoring any leidenfrost effect, it would become increasingly difficult to even put water into the pool without instantly vaporizing it. The water that can remain would come to a boil pretty close to immediately.

Assuming you built this in a magical place with the sun permanently overhead and an ambient temperature of 50 °C, it could reach a temperature of around 130 °C. Not quite enough for Leidenfrost effect, which in the case of water requires temperatures closer to 200 °C. If the pool has one metre of concrete on all sides, the total volume of concrete is about 2000 cubic metres. Structural concrete has a specific heat capacity of 1 kJ/kg°C and a density of 2400 kg/m³. After it drops below 100 °C it's no longer able to boil water so we're interested in how much heat it can give off in the span of those 30 degrees. Multiplying the relevant values together gives an impressive 144 GJ. Since we're in a pretty hot environment it takes 2.5 GJ to heat up and boil a cubic metre of water, so the pool's stored heat would be able to boil the first 50-odd cubic metres poured into it before cooling down below the boiling point of water.

Most of the incoming power is in visible light wavelengths, but the pool will radiate in far infrared. A cover made of a material which lets visible light pass in but prevents the infrared from getting out would trap the heat inside, significantly increasing the temperature. Even so, there's only enough power input to boil about two cubic metres per hour. To fill a pool of that size you'll certainly want more flow than that. As a point of comparison, a firehose can spew out more than 30 cubic metres of water per hour. A 500 °C pool would be able to boil away the water from a firehose for about 26 hours (taking into account the extra heat from the sun during that time), but eventually it would cool down and water would be able to stay liquid.

[Gemina]

An olympic size swimming pool is 50 by 25 metres, so it has an area of about 1250 square metres. If painted a perfect black and with sun shining from directly overhead, it would absorb around 1.3 megawatts of power. Examples of things with the same magnitude of power: a small locomotive, a medium-sized data center or about three 18-wheelers.


There's actually a limit to how hot it can get. The hotter it is, the more heat will be radiated into the air (and eventually space) as well as conducted into the ground. I did some calculations and it looks like it could reach around 100 °C over typical ambient temperature, but not much more than that. A higher ambient temperature makes the gap somewhat narrower because thermal radiation follows a quartic law. Still, you'd have an easier time frying things in California than Greenland.


Assuming you built this in a magical place with the sun permanently overhead and an ambient temperature of 50 °C, it could reach a temperature of around 130 °C. Not quite enough for Leidenfrost effect, which in the case of water requires temperatures closer to 200 °C. If the pool has one metre of concrete on all sides, the total volume of concrete is about 2000 cubic metres. Structural concrete has a specific heat capacity of 1 kJ/kg°C and a density of 2400 kg/m³. After it drops below 100 °C it's no longer able to boil water so we're interested in how much heat it can give off in the span of those 30 degrees. Multiplying the relevant values together gives an impressive 144 GJ. Since we're in a pretty hot environment it takes 2.5 GJ to heat up and boil a cubic metre of water, so the pool's stored heat would be able to boil the first 50-odd cubic metres poured into it before cooling down below the boiling point of water.

Most of the incoming power is in visible light wavelengths, but the pool will radiate in far infrared. A cover made of a material which lets visible light pass in but prevents the infrared from getting out would trap the heat inside, significantly increasing the temperature. Even so, there's only enough power input to boil about two cubic metres per hour. To fill a pool of that size you'll certainly want more flow than that. As a point of comparison, a firehose can spew out more than 30 cubic metres of water per hour. A 500 °C pool would be able to boil away the water from a firehose for about 26 hours (taking into account the extra heat from the sun during that time), but eventually it would cool down and water would be able to stay liquid.

Science and math are really interesting. I wish I had the aptitude to wrap my head around it more, but the more I tried, it was like trying to learn an instrument; which if I was to even perform with it somewhat decently, it would require hours upon hours of practice, and well longer than someone better attuned to it.

Still though, that is really hot and a lot of energy just with some paint. I wonder now if the pool was made of steel opposed to concrete, as metal is a far better conductor of heat. Not asking you to science more numbers, I'm just thinking out loud as I know this would increase the temperature of the pool and the energy it releases substantially. Plus we're getting a bit away from the blackness of Spriggy caps xD

[tdb]

Still though, that is really hot and a lot of energy just with some paint. I wonder now if the pool was made of steel opposed to concrete, as metal is a far better conductor of heat. Not asking you to science more numbers, I'm just thinking out loud as I know this would increase the temperature of the pool and the energy it releases substantially. Plus we're getting a bit away from the blackness of Spriggy caps xD

It wouldn't affect the balance of incoming and outgoing thermal radiation. Steel is a better conductor of heat than concrete though, which means the heat accumulated at the inner surface would be transferred to the surrounding earth faster, and the equilibrium temperature would actually be lower. At the same time it would also feel hotter to the touch because heat would be transferred to your skin faster.

Did you know that space shuttle thermal shielding elements are so poor conductors of heat that you can hold a 1500 °C element in your hand without getting burnt? This allows them to keep the inside temperature of the shuttle tolerable even as the friction of re-entry heats up the outside to immense temperatures.

Edit: As for the spriggan black dye, I think it's clear to everyone what's being requested and most people are just picking nits now. So might as well throw some fun science into the mix.

[Gemina]

It wouldn't affect the balance of incoming and outgoing thermal radiation. Steel is a better conductor of heat than concrete though, which means the heat accumulated at the inner surface would be transferred to the surrounding earth faster, and the equilibrium temperature would actually be lower. At the same time it would also feel hotter to the touch because heat would be transferred to your skin faster.

Did you know that space shuttle thermal shielding elements are so poor conductors of heat that you can hold a 1500 °C element in your hand without getting burnt? This allows them to keep the inside temperature of the shuttle tolerable even as the friction of re-entry heats up the outside to immense temperatures.

Edit: As for the spriggan black dye, I think it's clear to everyone what's being requested and most people are just picking nits now. So might as well throw some fun science into the mix.

I knew that space shuttle thermal shielding, as the name implies, shields our astronauts and the shuttle from the immense heat of reentry. That is one of those curious random thoughts that has me google "why don't astronauts incinerate upon reentry of Earth's orbit?" while in a waiting line at the store. However, I did not know you could hold a heat blasted rod of the stuff without getting burned though, or that it would take such a huge amount of heat and energy to get to the point that it does. I would imagine that is also the stuff put on probes sent to Venus so it can withstand the hostile environment there. If only we were higher on the Kardashev scale in this lifetime.

I watch a lot of Kyle Hill on youtube. He has fun and neat ways of explaining how Superman would actually kill everyone and everything when Lois dies in the first movie, turning Jupiter into a star, or all the ways super heroes would mangle themselves with their powers. Also helps a little that he's the Hemsworth who got the brains instead of the brawn.

I couldn't help but nitpick the blackness of the Spriggan cap. I suppose we could get a dye that is more black than jet, but part of the reason why the cap is so black is due to lack of visual textures to reflect anything. It just has two beady yellow eyes, and that's about it. Even when I tried dying the event Spriggan gear jet black, is wasn't even close.

[TheMightyMollusk]

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.

That old meme? The one posted by a tumblr account literally named facts-i-just-made-up?

[yotsuffy]

Well, well,

I'm not part of FFXIV's devs team so I can't say anything about how they made spriggans and the Spriggan Cap lightless. Maybe they applied a #000000 black, maybe they didn't apply any texture and the game shows the nothing it has to show.

All I know is we don't see any shadow darker than them on them and they look black unlike anything else. It is this effect I wish for and tried to recreate on my color test.

Spriggan black