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  1. #1
    Player
    Gramul's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Ul'dah
    Posts
    5,203
    Character
    Eisen Gramul
    World
    Hyperion
    Main Class
    Blacksmith Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Knives View Post
    An easy way to point this out is by using the mythril cuirass (lv40 tank gear). It is incredibly shiny, but when you add dye it dulls out significantly.

    Note how the undyed edges stay shiny. Also, an interesting feature about this armor is that it seems to turn more silvery in sunlight when undyed.
    But anyway, like Shioban said, it's low priority but nice to have.
    (4)

  2. #2
    Player Shioban's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Location
    Bastok
    Posts
    1,564
    Character
    Shio Ban
    World
    Twintania
    Main Class
    Conjurer Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Gramul View Post
    This is why I never dye my metallic armor. And also why I really don't like the Zenith armor. It looks so cheap when put up against the regular Relic armor.

    Thank you for bringing it up Shioban.
    I still find the old look to some of the original artifact armour in 1.23 better.

    I still have videos/screens from 1.23 where Paladins, Monks and Dragoons actually looked like they were wearing metal but at a beastly rendering cost. Some of the new Myth armour is terrible for this, the White Plastic Paladin Armour is (eugh)
    But as a compromise for performance originally in 2.0s development which is completely understandable but thankfully not beyond repair.

    Quote Originally Posted by Earende View Post
    I noticed this issue the very first time I tried applying dyes, and pretty much stopped using it since (not to mention you can't get some colours, or there is no actual black....)

    It is easier to notice this with plate armours (GLA, MRD, PLD, WAR), like Cobalt Cuirass where the majority of it is shiny and all.

    I always believed the reason for this is something like putting paint on cars - thus the shiny goes away. ;9
    That is a strange reason for doing it if it is deliberate (this is a fantasy world after all, conforming to this real life constraint would be a huge waste of the dye system.
    However a good point!

    Quote Originally Posted by Gramul View Post
    I hope this isn't due to some unfortunate technical limitation. I mean, they went out of their way to actually build this system from the ground up. Seems like a waste to be unable to keep the specular gloss.
    Maybe that's a fix that can come with DX11. They where talking about being able to use new shaders for it.
    The effect of the real-time reflections we had in 1.23 were gorgeous (as I previously mentioned) but sadly have a stupidly high rendering cost if done wrong (alá 1.23).
    If they actually considered adding it in for the DX11 client (even though this is a DX8 shader if not even earlier I don't exactly remember) that would be amazing.

    To be crass, "balls to the wall" in terms of graphical requirements for the DX11 client would make me and a ton of other people very happy (seeing as its optional, why not do it as a future investment when the world of average hardware shifts )


    (And also thank you for the support!)


    Quote Originally Posted by Gramul View Post

    Note how the undyed edges stay shiny. Also, an interesting feature about this armor is that it seems to turn more silvery in sunlight when undyed.
    But anyway, like Shioban said, it's low priority but nice to have.
    And I've added this to the OP! [Credited]
    (2)

  3. #3
    Player
    Nutz's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Posts
    1,140
    Character
    Monkey Nutz
    World
    Behemoth
    Main Class
    Pugilist Lv 60
    Quote Originally Posted by Gramul View Post

    Note how the undyed edges stay shiny. Also, an interesting feature about this armor is that it seems to turn more silvery in sunlight when undyed.
    But anyway, like Shioban said, it's low priority but nice to have.
    What's really strange is the gold trim is consistent across undyed and the two colors shown. They're obviously the same shader and it's working just fine. It would appear that when dying certain armors (no idea personally how far reaching the effect is) the game uses specular, color, normal, and/or some other maps that are incomplete or inconsistent with the undyed levels. Even though the dye system should only require swapping out the color map (which itself should be made by filling one color with another if you do a lot of layering in PS) they seem to have produced more maps than needed and made them poorly to boot. I'm not sure it's a technical problem at all. I think it's an artistic one (inconsistent and ineffective textures being used with dyed armor for no apparent reason).
    (1)

  4. #4
    Player Shioban's Avatar
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    Sep 2012
    Location
    Bastok
    Posts
    1,564
    Character
    Shio Ban
    World
    Twintania
    Main Class
    Conjurer Lv 90
    Quote Originally Posted by Estellios View Post
    Playing devil's advocate here, but could it be that they were going for a "painted" look on metal? I know they had plans for stuff like metallic and patterned dyes so these might be intended to look uh... not-shiny.
    Possibly, would be a waste of a great customisation system.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nutz View Post
    They're obviously the same shader and it's working just fine. .
    Could be.

    But with the Warwolf PvP gear it appears to be a specific shader effect and not the usual specular effect which seems to be almost completely defeated.

    However I could be wrong the shader effect might remain and simlpy be dampened by a new colour layer (still very odd however, technically the new layer should defeat it completely)

    Quote Originally Posted by Nutz View Post
    What's really strange is the gold trim is consistent across undyed and the two colors shown. They're obviously the same shader and it's working just fine. Even though the dye system should only require swapping out the color map I think it's an artistic one (inconsistent and ineffective textures being used with dyed armor for no apparent reason).

    There's a very high potential that this has been done deliberately, which would be very VERY silly. As it would completely defeat the purpose and flexibility of the dye system, most certainly it's not a technical limitation, that wouldn't make any sense (thankfully).


    So there's a potential that this is the issue but very unlikey, so take everything I've said here on with a pinch of salt.
    My 'theorycraft' so far is material layers;
    *Pending this is how they do it.

    > Shader Effect
    > Specular Map
    > Normal/Bump Map
    > Diffuse Map [Base Colour]

    So essentially what I /think/ is happening is this;

    > Diffuse Map [Dye Layer]
    > Shader Effect
    > Specular Map
    > Normal/Bump Map
    > Diffuse Map [Base RGB Colour]

    This doesn't make sense however in that the new diffuse layer should defeat the specular/shader effects. Odd.
    (1)