Practicality of Anthem Style Texture/Material Customization in Warframe

[-QUILL_PETER-]

I suppose the title is pretty self explanatory.

        What would it take to implement such an in-depth system in Warframe? Could it be done in a way that is worth the time and money needed to nearly rewire the entire fashion system?

        I would really hope so. It's great that we have a few different options of accessories from each faction and several unique one offs. The problem is they all have unique textures that don't match, even other sets from the same faction. So even though I *can* wear Saturn Six armor with, say, Galvanik, 9/10 times I won't bc the matte of the SS clashes with the (over the top imo) gloss of the Galvanik. 

         There's also the issue of misaligned color channels but iirc Steve already mentioned that fixes for that are *somewhere* down the pipeline. If that is the case then maybe sooner than later would be the time to rewire the customization to allow for Anthem's material/texture swap tech.

          Bear in mind a great deal of what determines whether or not it's worth the investment is how much the playerbase wants it, so if texture/material swap is something we want then let's let them know.

 

[AlendasNaro]

Hmm... Tough to say... I can not give anything against this or to support this. My main question is: Does DE think this is okay for their vision of cosmetic design?

[Teksorbkyva]

While that'd be cool, the sheer amount of cosmetic textures in the game makes it a monumental task. I'd be all for it if DE could manage it without it taking away resources from new content and update teams.

[akots]

IMHO, it is very subjective. Anthem sometimes looks pretty ugly and is rather generic and not something I would like to see personally. WF graphics and colors are considerably more "fluid". Texture is a hit or miss in most cases. It also does not fit well with lore, WF are not human-made ironmen.

[DrivaMain]

Steve has been passing idea of changing the materials of the warframes for some time.

[--F--NerevarCM]

44 minutes ago, -QUILL_PETER- said:

I suppose the title is pretty self explanatory.

        What would it take to implement such an in-depth system in Warframe? Could it be done in a way that is worth the time and money needed to nearly rewire the entire fashion system?

        I would really hope so. It's great that we have a few different options of accessories from each faction and several unique one offs. The problem is they all have unique textures that don't match, even other sets from the same faction. So even though I *can* wear Saturn Six armor with, say, Galvanik, 9/10 times I won't bc the matte of the SS clashes with the (over the top imo) gloss of the Galvanik. 

         There's also the issue of misaligned color channels but iirc Steve already mentioned that fixes for that are *somewhere* down the pipeline. If that is the case then maybe sooner than later would be the time to rewire the customization to allow for Anthem's material/texture swap tech.

          Bear in mind a great deal of what determines whether or not it's worth the investment is how much the playerbase wants it, so if texture/material swap is something we want then let's let them know.

 

The difference is that Anthem "style" is totally generic. And pretty much every weapon looks the same and have the same aesthetics. This helps because every weapon have the same materials.

In Warframe, you have so much materials that adding this system in here would take a gigantic amount of work from DE. And too much work for DE means that attention is taken off somewhere to be put on this.

For me, is a no.

[lukinu_u]

A system like this would work if all materials are generic and procedural from normal, AO and curvature, and applied to your equipement based on masks, which I think is the case for some of the most content since Revenant release, but it's not for all earlier content which would require a big revamp of all of these (including all Tennogen so far, that still use regular textures).

Also, this system require a lot more work if you want to place specific dirt/scratch placement, or other patterns not related to the different materials and need specific placement rather than generic material effect. If you look closely at any warframes released after Revenant, they all have generic placement for dirt and scratchs that are only tied to the materials, while some older warframes like Valkyr, Nyx or Frost have more interesting dirt placements that bring more personnality to the character and make them more unique.

Overall, it would be possible if all older stuff get updated to fit the new system, but it wouldn't be surprising since it already happened when they moved from old render to new PBR (this has been done progressively).
However, it would be a looot of work because on top of the conversion, they would need new dirt and details mask to apply the missing details from generic materials, recreate all existing materials used on older frames, and they would also need to force a new unique workflow for Tennogen artists that rely on THEIR engine (due to the unique material system), which mean developping a new tool for Tennogen artists to preview their work with the game engine using their materials library, as long as adding a way to add new material to the library if they don't want to add big limitations for artists.

Also, it's worth considering all material are treated differently in the sculpt for baking stuff. For example, metallic parts need to be cleaner and sharper for reflection to look nice, while less shiny parts can be left roughly unfinished because we will see the bumps a lot less. This mean applying a metallic material to a part that wasn't intended for might look really bad and vice versa.

Another potential issue, how would it work exactly when material aren't directly tied to the color ?
For example, Rhino Scarab have one metallic material with a gradient of two colors, Atlas deluxe 4th color apply to parts of the rock, metal on hands and parts of the cloth, and same goes for a lot of content in the game. This mean some skin have more/less materials than colors and they aren't necessarily applied the same way, so would materials be a completely separate choice ?

TL;DR : It's definitely possible but would require a huge amount of work, some decisions need to be made in order to have a workaround to each unique situation of unique material/colors applications, and on top of that, it would require a huge revamp of the Tennogen program, which is a lot of work for both DE and the artists currently participating.

[-QUILL_PETER-]

47 minutes ago, lukinu_u said:

TL;DR : It's definitely possible but would require a huge amount of work, some decisions need to be made in order to have a workaround to each unique situation of unique material/colors applications, and on top of that, it would require a huge revamp of the Tennogen program, which is a lot of work for both DE and the artists currently participating.



 

Well there's all the answers I could have hoped for

To clarify, I don't want Warframe to *look* like Anthem. I don't know where people got that impression, I can only assume they read like 3 words and jumped to a conclusion.

I just think it would be cool to have Anthem's customization.