Advanced prime details

[lukinu_u]

With newer prime having much more complexe work on the remodel with bigger "prime parts", the use of skins with prime details on become less of an option, or at least insn't worth using as most of the skins will be hidden by the prime parts.
Nekros, Valkyr, Chroma Prime are good example of this. Nekros and Valkyr ave the whole front torso part hidden by prime details, while Chroma has only tiny spots on legs and hands visible.

You could just turn off the prime details, but there are some small parts of the prime details that still look good without hidding the skin and that's what this idea is meant for. The idea is to allow player choosing which part of the prime details you want to show/hide to provide more customisation, in a really simple way that wouldn't be hard to implement in game.

Instead of the current "toggle prime details" option, there would be a submenu like attachements/syandana where you can select which prime parts you want to toggle on and off. The differents parts and their name depend on the warframe.




How it's set up on the technical side is pretty simple.
All warframe with prime variant get a revisited mesh that include body with both prime parts and non-prime parts, all rigged together with 3 material instances :

• One for the base that doesn't change (red on the picture)
• One for the non-prime parts (blue on the picture)
• One for the prime parts (green on the picture)

This end up looking like this.
First picture is the raw model and second is respectively with non-prime and prime details only.



Now what, happen is both non-prime and prime materials get a mask assigned to them, that will define what toggle slot (from 1 to 5) affect them, depending on the color. For each color, non-prime part will be visible when toggle is off, and prime part will be visible when toggle is on.
Each color canal (red, green, blue, alpha) + black will make up to 5 different toggleable parts depending on the warframe.

Here is an example on how it would be setup for Saryn :

• 1 - Red : Neck
• 2 - Green : Arms
• 3 - Blue : Skirt
• 4 - Alpha : Legs
• 5 - Black : Boot

I don't exactly know how the game engine handle oppacity, but I think a binary 0/1 opacity without blending shouldn't be much of a problem and for texture storage, a low gradient 4 channels 1024 or 512 texture is probably really cheap. As this texture won't need gradient, it can even be converted into a grayscale texture where each 20% gray section represent a mask, which would be even cheaper and would allow more than 5 colors.
As for account storage, with 5 toggles there are only 32 possibility, which is probably low compared to other variable on skin customisation.

Thanks to Master Noob (don't have his ingame alias) for helping me extracting Saryn prime files.

[Chaemyerelis]

I'm all for more customization. The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was how off mesa prime still is with a tennogen skin. 

[yunoctavia]

true, we need more customizations

[Scruffel]

I'd honestly try to move this to the Feedback section if you could, there's definitely more of a discussion for this.

There could be certain issues like how to classify certain Prime models in terms of the similar Neck/Arms/Legs/etc. categories, as for something like Vauban Prime or probably Mesa Prime, it would probably have to be oversimplified (as in less categories) because of situations where a piece of mesh was not meant to be separated with something else (for ex. Vaub P's turtleneck). Saryn Prime is a good example of how this could be done, but her model is simple to the point where this sort of thing is way more possible. Not sure if I can say the same about others.

Another issue that may arise if some default and prime details clip into each other which may have to call for some more simplifications.

I can definitely get behind the idea of this, even if it might take a very long amount of time to really do this. Although, it probably wouldn't hurt for DE to either start doing this now with upcoming Primes or going back to some more simpler Primes and begin there as well.

[lukinu_u]

Il y a 13 heures, Scruffel a dit :

I'd honestly try to move this to the Feedback section if you could, there's definitely more of a discussion for this.

Yeah, it's not really feedback from existing stuff, more of an idea so I though fan concept would better fit, but you're right.
(I don't know how to move a topic)

Il y a 13 heures, Scruffel a dit :

There could be certain issues like how to classify certain Prime models in terms of the similar Neck/Arms/Legs/etc. categories, as for something like Vauban Prime or probably Mesa Prime, it would probably have to be oversimplified (as in less categories) because of situations where a piece of mesh was not meant to be separated with something else (for ex. Vaub P's turtleneck). Saryn Prime is a good example of how this could be done, but her model is simple to the point where this sort of thing is way more possible. Not sure if I can say the same about others.

Another issue that may arise if some default and prime details clip into each other which may have to call for some more simplifications.

The idea it to get up to 5 differents parts to switch for flexibility, but not all warframe have that much, meaning they would have less, a bit like some old weapons had on 2-3 customisable colors before receiving a PBR ugrade.
For example, on Valkyr I see only 3 parts :

• upper legs/body/shoulders (which is on big part)
• arms
• feet / legs metal bits

But considering the model will need to be revisited and rerigged to include both non-prime and prime parts, they could also take the time to split the prime parts that need to get more parts, like for Valkyr, sperating the big part into upper legs, body and shoulder this way :

 

Il y a 13 heures, Scruffel a dit :

I can definitely get behind the idea of this, even if it might take a very long amount of time to really do this. Although, it probably wouldn't hurt for DE to either start doing this now with upcoming Primes or going back to some more simpler Primes and begin there as well.

Has the gradually PBR treatement old stuff got, I totally agree with this. Doing this for all prime at the same time would take huge amount of time, so releasing this gradually, will be much more manageable, also allowing to gather feedback and make sure it's done the right way.

[Scruffel]

3 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

Yeah, it's not really feedback from existing stuff, more of an idea so I though fan concept would better fit, but you're right.
(I don't know how to move a topic)

I think you have to report the thread with the message of "This post is okay but..." and write out that you think it should classify as Feedback and move it towards the appropriate section. Don't worry, I'll help you with it.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Scruffel

[Scruffel]

Oh cool, this thread did get moved to the Feedback section. Maybe it's time for a late bump.

With the arrival of the Excalibur Umbra toggle that came about two weeks ago, there is another discussion point that might make this proposal interesting. Some people have suggested or wanted that the Scarf for Excal Umbra should be separated from the current toggles and be an Auxiliary equipment. Now already it would seem like the thread idea would tackle that issue, but I think the call for such a change could be used towards it.

Basically, should DE (for the time) try and start to separate the Primes' (And Umbra's) models to make specific pieces use the Auxiliary slot? Personally, I feel like the item chosen should be significant or present enough within the Details to warrant such a change, but it could be interesting either way.

Edited August 2, 2019 by Scruffel