Excalibur Prime Tint Mask and Default Color issues

[NightmareT12]

As everyone knows last year's Rathuum Update brought PBR to Excalibur, Nyx, Rhino and Ember Prime courtesy of Kary. However, because of a number of reasons that I totally understand, those came out... Not so nicely as the rest of updates done before. Most of the issues relay on the Tint channels, as the actual material conversion was truly good.

While all of them present issues (working on Nyx tomorrow, which is 2nd biggest issue), Excalibur Prime has been the one to suffer the most.

I'm going to post pics below of the most notable stuff I can see, but it's not limited to them. There's tints mixing, some outlines, bad shapes, out of line tints, missing details (ie: missing gold spots). I can even see stripes that are narrower than they should be on his back.

TINT MASK:
For reference, tint channel of Blinn Phong Excalibur Prime (took the original Design Council pic for the vote):



And now pics with notes on them:

As I said, there's possibly more that eludes me. Still, even with all the small bits I am fairly confident this should be easy to fix.

Take the most talented person on the character team and have him/her work on this, please. Seriously, please.

If, for wahetever the reason you guys decide to make the tint mask from scratch again, then I'd suggest to rearrange the tints:

Tint 1: White
Tint 2: Backparts
Tint 3: Stripes -> Default channeling effects go to Tint 3, so by resetting them we can also gain back Channeling on stripes
Tint 4: Gold

DEFAULT COLORS:
Also, since we're on the topic: when Kary had to enter the colors he most likely unintentionally made them stronger, oversaturating them by a bit. To see what I mean, old Excalibur Prime tints:



In Hex Colors (thanks Photoshop):
-Tint 1: #a5a394 (it's on Yellow range)
-Tint 2/3: #faf8eb (also on Yellow range)
-Tint 4: #9d9690 (Orange-ish range)

New Excalibur Tints:


The greys are more upwards on the spectrum, closer to green than the old.

I tried to go back to the original colors as much as possible with the Orokin pallette:


Which in the end is coherent with other Orokin designs (Targis Prime, Liset Prime) too, also looking closer to this:

In short, and given current tint distribution, this would be the correct values per tint (not putting in gold since it's already fine):

Seriously, I hope this can finally be fixed. It's personally really sorry to see the poor guy getting such a shaft.

Thanks for your time.

EDIT: And one last note, before I forget -- the original conversions came out compressed. Kary was really fast in correcting that and now Excalibur and Nyx present one of the most uncompressed assets in game. Whatever you guys deliver, I surely hope there's as little compression artifacts as to what we have now. Because I've noticed the latest releases precisely have some bad compression on stripes/details, like they were upscaled.

And now I log off, it's 4:30 AM and I need to sleep LOL

EDIT 2: Added more pics courtesy of Captura 🙂

EDIT 4: Added stuff for the colors.

Edited August 19, 2019 by NightmareT12

[Mcl_Blue]

I hope this is brought to the attention of the relevant people. Excalibur Prime is already neglected in so many ways, he should at least have this.

[NightmareT12]

7 minutes ago, Mcl_BlueMadness said:

I hope this is brought to the attention of the relevant people. Excalibur Prime is already neglected in so many ways, he should at least have this.

I know. I passed some of those to Kary via PM a couple of months ago when I noticed them, but today I found even more and some old reference pics so... Here I am. Putting all the stuff I can out.

I'll try to post Nyx tomorrow, I know she still has some extra spots, a couple of not correctly painted lines and maybe I come up with some ideas so the old Tint 4 spots become a bit nicer. That one is not in such a bad shape though, thankfully -- Kary tried to respond to all the feedback we found out last year as quickly as he could so many issues are gone.

And BTW, back of the head is ours to blame for having him add the Tint 3 on helm... If we could only have separate helmet colors, damn it.

Edited March 24, 2017 by NightmareT12

[Dahx11]

Come on dude, just be glad you at least you have him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[NightmareT12]

Just now, Dahx11 said:

Come on dude, just be glad you at least you have him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's not the point -- I know DE has top quality artists, and precisely the nice chap who did these is one of them. But he's usually working on weapons.

So when I see stuff like this on Excalibur Prime, Nyx Prime, Rhino Prime and Ember Prime, I die a bit inside, because I know they can deliver much, MUCH better.

Had Mynki himself done this one, for example, I doubt there would have been any complaint. Mainly because a) He's as talented as anyone else on DE and b) He's got a S#&$load of experience on character work. Just look at Nekros Prime or the normal Excalibur PBR update. It's crazy.

[Wevi]

12 minutes ago, Mcl_BlueMadness said:

I hope this is brought to the attention of the relevant people. Excalibur Prime is already neglected in so many ways, he should at least have this.

Probably wont since people wont notice + more posts like this    v    will just flood any thread involving founder things .But  tbh DE should have handled that poll vote much better since most of DC now consist of non founders. even though they don't even have him they pretty much voted for us.

Just now, Dahx11 said:

Come on dude, just be glad you at least you have him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stop

[NightmareT12]

Just now, Wevi said:

Probably wont since people wont notice + more posts like this    v    will just flood any thread involving founder things .But  tbh DE should have handled that poll vote much better since most of DC now consist of non founders. even though they don't even have him they pretty much voted for us.

stop

We came up with the better option though -- I noticed today the tubes use gray too, so having both grays together when they were not the same originally neither... Would have lost a lot of contrast. A lot.

But whatever. Until someone finds out a miracolous way of getting 4+ tints...

[BoomyGordo]

you circled it but im still not seeing it.... or maybe i dont care enough about micro-inconsistencies like this when there are HUGE  glaring issues everywhere else in the game.

im still enjoying excal prime all the same even after this post.... and still cant see anything but the colored circle on the back of his head.

[NightmareT12]

9 hours ago, --Laughing-Soul-- said:

you circled it but im still not seeing it.... or maybe i dont care enough about micro-inconsistencies like this when there are HUGE  glaring issues everywhere else in the game.

im still enjoying excal prime all the same even after this post.... and still cant see anything but the colored circle on the back of his head.

More power to you then!

I totally see the bad shapes, miscolored arras, missing gold, etc. Anyone in the character team should be able to see them with all the references I did post.

As I said too it took me a few months to see a lot of them. The only one I knew about at the start was the lack of gold in the legs...

IDK what those glaring issues are btw, but I doubt that, besides lack of PBR on some frames, they're for the same team I'm trying to reach out with this.

EDIT: I think this pic will help clarify a bit more how rough the tint channel is:


You should be able to see the paint drop on the spine, the weird grey-ish lines that are a result of mixing two tints (check the tube for example), some bad spots on the shoulder where Tints 2 and 3 (green blue) meet, and the red stripe deforming...

Edited March 24, 2017 by NightmareT12

[NightmareT12]

Bump -- I added some more pictures thanks to the new Captura function. The increased lighting should help A LOT to see those.

Will try to cover the legs a bit more later.

[NightmareT12]

-ignore-

Edited April 12, 2019 by NightmareT12

[NightmareT12]

*uses Shadows of the Dead*

Got Steve to notice me yesterday about this. He didn't make a note though, pretty sure he'll forget :')

[NightmareT12]

Bumpity bump. I'd like to know if someone on the team is actually aware of this, I don't want to lose hope on the little number of issues left on the platter now ;__; We're close to having those all fixed actually. Excalibur Prime aside, it's only minor touch ups on Nyx Prime, a small work on Ember Prime, Rhino Prime getting a pass and Mag Prime getting the fix on her crotch/waist line.

[Valiant]

On 24/03/2017 at 3:43 AM, Dahx11 said:

Come on dude, just be glad you at least you have him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you're going to do a job half-heartedly, don't do it at all.

Just because it's an exclusive that is no longer on offer and not everyone has it doesn't mean it should neglected. People didn't pay for neglect.

On 24/03/2017 at 3:22 AM, NightmareT12 said:

EDIT: And one last note, before I forget -- the original conversions came out compressed. Kary was really fast in correcting that and now Excalibur and Nyx present one of the most uncompressed assets in game. Whatever you guys deliver, I surely hope there's as little compression artifacts as to what we have now. Because I've noticed the latest releases precisely have some bad compression on stripes/details, like they were upscaled.

Unfortunately there's other frame's which suffer from this as well. If I look at Frost Prime, especially his backpack, it's rather fuzzy and blocky.

[NightmareT12]

1 hour ago, Valiant said:

If you're going to do a job half-heartedly, don't do it at all.

Just because it's an exclusive that is no longer on offer and not everyone has it doesn't mean it should neglected. People didn't pay for neglect.

Unfortunately there's other frame's which suffer from this as well. If I look at Frost Prime, especially his backpack, it's rather fuzzy and blocky.

Yeah, I'm very well aware. Targis Prime, Loki, large etcetera. But I think it'd be better they fixed ones with issues first and tried to make new releases with better textures, so old assets won't be as many when they want to update them for 4K and stuff.

Edited June 26, 2017 by NightmareT12

[NightmareT12]

Umbra is coming, but please don't forget about our boy. He needs to be fixed, pretty please ;_;

[NightmareT12]

This is still an issue, so... bump.

Edited September 15, 2017 by NightmareT12

[Teshin_Dax]

Am 12.9.2017 um 17:10 schrieb NightmareT12:

This is still an issue, so... bump.

I noticed these issues too.. all of them .. 

Everything in your thread should be addressed. The lack of quality (sorry, but i have to admit that some areas are poorly done/ fleshed out) bugs me a lot.
From day to day i began to notice more issues, but i never saw a thread of it.. 

 

(i guess there arent many founders out there that use excal as much as i do - with the default skin)

Luckily i found this in the search bar today.. i will keep on writing/ posting in this thread like you do/did. 
You've put so much effort into this thread by collecting details about every issue.. now it should be much easier for DE to fix them.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Teshin_Dax

[Kadishia]

I still use Excalibur Prime as a default skin time to time. After reading this, a rework really needs to be done. 

[NightmareT12]

1 hour ago, Teshin_Dax said:

I noticed these issues too.. all of them .. 

Everything in your thread should be addressed. The lack of quality (sorry, but i have to admit that some areas are poorly done/ fleshed out) bugs me a lot.
From day to day i began to notice more issues, but i never saw a thread of it.. 

 

(i guess there arent many founders out there that use excal as much as i do - with the default skin)

Luckily i found this in the search bar today.. i will keep on writing/ posting in this thread like you do/did. 
You've put so much effort into this thread by collecting details about every issue.. now it should be much easier for DE to fix them.

Well, the whole batch of Excalibur/Nyx/Rhino/Ember has issues, mainly because Kary is not (or rather was, not sure what he's doing nowadays) part of the character team.

Hopefully they can get around these soon this year, because it's depressing and I have a "to-go" list of stuff like this, so... ^_^" First I need to pass a few details about Loki/Ember/Mag Prime to Kaz though that are long overdue, since they lost some stuff during their respective PBR conversions too, but hopefully that doesn't take much time to fix.

[Teshin_Dax]

.. to the part pointing out that some of Excalibur Primes Gold lines/parts on the legs got removed... 

..if they did that intentionally because we wont see the details with the new pbr version, then excal should keep a shiny texture like Blinn Phong (color-able version) on those parts..
but i was not okay with the removal of those parts at all .. i loved the minimal details.

Excal primes design is outdated enough

[NightmareT12]

48 minutes ago, Teshin_Dax said:

.. to the part pointing out that some of Excalibur Primes Gold lines/parts on the legs got removed... 

..if they did that intentionally because we wont see the details with the new pbr version, then excal should keep a shiny texture like Blinn Phong (color-able version) on those parts..
but i was not okay with the removal of those parts at all .. i loved the minimal details.

Excal primes design is outdated enough

They didn't do it on purpose. Since they needed to redo the tint files they most likely got lost on conversion. In fact we'd be able to notice them more with PBR due the metallics shining like proper metallics.

[Teshin_Dax]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb NightmareT12:

They didn't do it on purpose. Since they needed to redo the tint files they most likely got lost on conversion. In fact we'd be able to notice them more with PBR due the metallics shining like proper metallics.

i hope so .. and for all the fixes to appear soon.. 

The channeling on the stripes is the biggest loss so far, if you ask me.. but there is way too much wrong atm

Edited January 7, 2018 by Teshin_Dax

[Teshin_Dax]

Am ‎07‎.‎01‎.‎2018 um 18:36 schrieb NightmareT12:

 

Did you linked this thread via the forums to a dev. (maybe DE_Steve himself, because DE_Rebecca seems inactive since the quest came out)

[NightmareT12]

5 hours ago, Teshin_Dax said:

Did you linked this thread via the forums to a dev. (maybe DE_Steve himself, because DE_Rebecca seems inactive since the quest came out)

Tried to get Steve to notice me asking on stream once, and I believe I have tweeted it to him at least once? But not sure. I also don't really want to just keep pestering people unless it's been a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time (because I have already done it in the past). Thread's here, it's alive, it gets read. I also messaged it to Rebecca in December, so at some point she'll catch up I believe.

Anyways, I'm sure they're aware but it's one of those "on hold" things. Although I'd rather have them work on separating helmet and body customization first, then we can 100% fix Excalibur Prime :)