Discussion: leave colors

[EtlamGit]

Some long time ago Mojang changed the leave colors to be brighter (1.14 update). We never updated our colors in the definition files to match that change. As we now get a new biome dependent Mangrove Leave, I tried to figure out how we selected the color in the past. I did not succeed fully to find a closed description how to get from a texture file to a block color. Here is what I figured out:

• we try to render leaves darker to get them pop out more from the grass background
• (other blocks get the average of the top texture as default color)
• most leave textures are monochrome and are blended with biome foliage
• Azalea leaves are not biome dependent and out of scope here
• When we look through the leaves we see mostly the dark background of other leaves, in fast graphics it is even black. So it is a acceptable approach to place a black background behind each leave texture and calculate the average afterwards. This automatically ensures darker color.
• The resulting color should be monochrome. Except for Jungle Leaves as it looks very tone in tone with all the Vines around.

When applying this rule we get this change from 1.13 to 1.14:
[current leave colors based on 1.13 textures]

[suggested new leave colors based on 1.14 - 1.19 textures]

What we observe:

• in general colors get brighter, but as Mojang changed the textures to be brighter, this is expected
• Birch gets darker and Spruce gets brighter. This means we had some strange mapping in the past