Background Color Modulations

[ninapaley]

Since we can now have gradients, what if we could generate a gradient for the background of a creature?

This involves modulating the background color. In this case it simply has a white value at the center, then the background color, then black at the furthest outside, which I reduced by extending the vector of the gradient beyond the background area. The white simply lightens, and the black darkens, the background color.

Another way to make more interesting backgrounds would be to plop a big ol' symbol behind everything, and color it a slightly darker or lighter shade of the background color. Here I have rendered only the fills, no outlines. I have chosen strong, simple silhouettes; these I could specify for such use in their TOMLs, with a line like
background = true

But we could also render both outline and fill of a central background symbol, by using a slightly lighter shade for outline and slightly darker for fill, or vice-versa:

Thoughts? Would this be easy or hard?

[toolness]

Oh I like this idea! I think that if you added the background = true I could probably make that work. One challenge might be to figure out how big we want the background to be... should it maximally fill the background area as much as possible, or should it attempt to be just a little bigger than the thing that it's backgrounding, or something else?

For the very first background in your description--the radial gradient--I wonder if it'd be possible to actually make a "symbol" that was just a circle with a radial gradient in it, and no stroke? That way, the first background would just be another symbol use case, rather than requiring the implementation of a custom gradient background.

[ninapaley]

Oh I like this idea! I think that if you added the background = true I could probably make that work. One challenge might be to figure out how big we want the background to be... should it maximally fill the background area as much as possible, or should it attempt to be just a little bigger than the thing that it's backgrounding, or something else?

A background symbol like the starburst or hand should just be a little bigger than the thing it's backgrounding.
But we can also use symbols for patterned backgrounds, per issues #107 and #101 - repeating multiple suns or clouds or whatevers - and those could fill the whole space, sort of like this:

For the very first background in your description--the radial gradient--I wonder if it'd be possible to actually make a "symbol" that was just a circle with a radial gradient in it, and no stroke? That way, the first background would just be another symbol use case, rather than requiring the implementation of a custom gradient background.

Gradient symbols attached:
Archive.zip

Can we support transparencies? Then a transparent "glow" symbol that could be dropped in like any other, without applying any colors. Transparent gradient symbols attached:
Archive 2.zip
(If transparency support is too much trouble, please ignore this.)

[ninapaley]

I think that if you added the background = true I could probably make that work.

Done! I added background = true to some select TOMLs and successfully uploaded them to the repository without anything exploding.

[ninapaley]

Adding a comment to bump this up the queue.