Dice Color in FGU...

[HoloGnome]

Is there a way to change the dice color in FGU? Currently, I just see an empty box labeled "Dice Color."

See the following:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=58945&stc=1&d=1695652798


ps. The attachment upload function for posts isn't actually adding thumbnails or making it easy to show the image without manually adding a direct bbcode tag to the link.

[HoloGnome]

Never mind. I see that you have to choose the default die. I assumed I could colorize any die selection...like from "Elemental Basics." Not at all clear from the UI perspective.

However, it looks like the color is correctly saving to the FGU campaign, so good job on the save/restore.

I guess the question I have is...why are color changes locked out for any die type or texture? No matter what die model the user chooses, it would be nice if they could colorize it. Or in the case of the default die, it would also be nice to be able to upload a custom texture - luminance file, etc.

[Zacchaeus]

Colour-able dice have a small colour palette icon on their top right. Depending on what dice sets you have there are several colour-able dice.

[HoloGnome]

Thanks. The remaining questions are:

1. Why aren't all dice colorable?
2. Is it a stretch to be able to apply a luminance-based texture file to the surface?

Isn't the skin model for the dice a standard format that could easily be modified by standard transforms?

[LordEntrails]

Thanks. The remaining questions are:

1. Why aren't all dice colorable?
2. Is it a stretch to be able to apply a luminance-based texture file to the surface?

Isn't the skin model for the dice a standard format that could easily be modified by standard transforms?
Probably because at the start transparency was not a requirement for the early skins. Still is probably not. In one regard, it would limit the ability to make new skins of different colors.

But in short, we don't know how the dice are skinned because no API has been released for them and they are not something available to the community to modify.

[HoloGnome]

Thanks, LordEntrails.

It would be very nice to have a user-accessible API. It seems like it would be straightforward to define and parse, given what is already there (where it looks like FGU is already using modified static values from the Unity Color struct).

Possible Minimal Dice API data object:

Version - a 32-bit value representing the version or signature of this object
DieColor -- an rgba32 value for die color (including alpha channel for die opacity)
TextColor -- an rgba32 value for text color (including alpha channel for text opacity)
TextureColor -- an rgba32 value for texture color (including alpha channel for texture opacity)
PatternData -- a 32x32 texture asset -- embedded in the structure as a 1K object

But...that's it -- 4 32-bit values and a 32x32 pattern.

This kind of object could also optionally include support for things like:

Smoothness -- an integer value for die surface/corner smoothness/rounding
Highlight -- an rgb32 value for specular highlights (including alpha value for highlight opacity)
Shadow -- an rgb32 value for die shadow (including alpha value for transparency)
HighlightSize -- an integer value for highlight size
ShadowSize -- an integer value for highlight size
(these values could also be a function of lighting distance, but more work)
Material -- an integer for a material index that is tied to different rolling sounds -- like for wood vs. plastic vs. metal, etc.

Just a suggestion. I hope it is helpful at some point in the future.

[LordEntrails]

SmiteWorks has said they have no plans to create a public API for it yet. They spent a lot of development dollars on it and need to recoup that. I suspect sometime after they do that they will reconsider releasing an API.

[ddavison]

Each of the Elemental Dice is essentially just preset color combination we thought looked good and would work for common damage types. This is true for many of our other skins and effects as well. Fx colors were initially locked as well but later updates allowed us to pass a color change to those as well and now we use that feature on some dice sets. Long term, we will probably open it up to allow the mixing and matching of various face textures, body textures, Fx, and color combinations for people to really customize their own sets using any other set they have purchased. We are not there yet and frankly, dice are subsidizing some of our other development efforts.

[HoloGnome]

Doug/LE - Thanks for the explanations. It would be great to have a generic API as circumstances permit. I hope that my comments above will be useful in the future.

I mentioned the Unity Color struct because it has 11 static colors that are similar-ish to the 11 (1 + 10) predefined colors in the default sets (but maybe with some changes).

Happy dicing!