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Colours and Palettes

Chris Adderley edited this page May 24, 2019 · 7 revisions

Diffuse Colour Usage

The Restock Colour Palette is used for pretty much everything in the mod. An Adobe shared palette can be found here. Unfortunately I have polluted it with some other Near Future Suite items but still relevant.

Our colour choice should be broken down primarily using two choices: Roles and Manufacturers. Additionally, care should be given to Special Surface Types which can affect colour choice, particularly when looking at KSP post-1.4 variants.

Roles

Generally our parts should use colour to advertise their role. Though most parts sit with a uniform grey/white colour scheme, highlights are used to add visual interest in a number of categories. Here are some examples

Batteries and Electrical Parts

Typically batteries will have a specific housing and use for highlights. They should indicate their charge using a bright green LED.

High power electrical parts should usually use and to tie them together with other electrical majority parts.

Crewed Parts

Typically crewed parts will have a base, or a base if made of exposed metal. Their consistent colour element will be windows, which must be .

Xenon Parts

Electric propulsion parts have a call-out but should also incorporate the Electrical colour elements in the form of wiring.

Probe Cores

Probe cores are usually monochrome, and sport a single specific nameplate. Drone cores also incorporate circuit board in Circuit Board Green and common computer elements in

Probe cores, drone cores and reaction wheels can all share emissive red LED illumination.

Reaction Wheels

Reaction wheels are a good example of using the color for wiring highlights. They share a base palette of and painted exteriors

Engines

In general engines sit with a set of greys, with particular tones typing together features such as ablative nozzles between several different engines. Engine highlights are tied to manufacturers.

Manufacturers

Where Role doesn't provide enough distinction (eg. between fuel tanks, liquid fuel engines, etc), we can resort to Manufacturer differentiations. In this case we give all parts built by a given manufacturer a certain look and feel, and a typical colour scheme. Manufacturers we use include:

Jeb's Junkyard

Base of and highlights of . Hull sheeting (eg tanks) in and

Rockomax Conglomerate

Base of and highlights of . Hull sheeting (eg tanks) in

Kerbodyne

Base of . Hull sheeting (eg tanks) in . Hull highlights in .

Special Surface Types

Dark Grey/Orange

The KSP 1.4+ era introduced us to the misnamed Dark Grey/Orange surface variant type. In Restock we will capture this using the combination of and regardless of actual manufacturer.

Spray-On Foam Insulation

Certain tanks and recreate the space shuttle's external tank/Delta IV rocket's iconic orange insulation and are baselined to use . Though this is a layered effect, it should generally terminate with an approximately color for consistency. Highlighting and panels on the surface use as a base

Specular Usage

Specular level is used in Restock primarily to differentiate surface material types. Most Metal objects should have a base specular level of RGB: 166, 166, 166, and most painted surfaces at RGB: 64, 64, 64 . Variability should be used to simulate surfaces more precisely.