Mask opacity

[Techwright]

Most masks are handled as a style color arrangment on the face options.  For reasons I never understood, the original development team made the colors less than truly opaque.  This has led to some lighter colors, particularly white, looking ridiculous as the skin tones bleed through what should be seen as a solid mask. It looks like someone used chalk to dust a mask onto the skin.  This happens even at skin tone color extremes.  Features that should be hidden by the pattern of the mask are front-and-center obvious through the mask, like the eyebrows in the blue mask I've included.  I avoid white masks for these very reasons.  Dark colors, especially black, fare better, though even there, the eyebrow can be seen, when it should be hidden under the pattern. (see both black and dark purple examples)

 

Is there any way for the current development team to dial up the opacity of mask colors so we get a true white, with no eyebrows (or other features) or skin showing where the mask is supposed to cover?

 

[Oubliette_Red]

This is particularly annoying on my mime.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

This has led to some lighter colors, particularly white, looking ridiculous as the skin tones bleed through what should be seen as a solid mask. It looks like someone used chalk to dust a mask onto the skin. 

This happens with white as a skin tone too. Make a white character? And you get a caucasian character covered in some flour instead.

[Stormwalker]

Try doing a white "Tops with Skin" on a female character and you get basically the same effect.  I'd like to see this fixed, too.

Edited March 20 by Stormwalker

[biostem]

There are some face options that don't exhibit this behavior, but those generally aren't skin, either.  I could be misremembering, but doesn't this have to do with how colors on skin are treated as an addition of the color, instead of being applied over/on top of, the skin?  Conjecture aside, yes, I'd like my chosen face color to actually reflect, y'know, the actual color I selected, so agreed!?

[El D]

51 minutes ago, biostem said:

There are some face options that don't exhibit this behavior, but those generally aren't skin, either.  I could be misremembering, but doesn't this have to do with how colors on skin are treated as an addition of the color, instead of being applied over/on top of, the skin?  Conjecture aside, yes, I'd like my chosen face color to actually reflect, y'know, the actual color I selected, so agreed!?

 

This is correct! Also fully agreed. Colors being on the same layer with the skin is why lighter patterns have much stronger bleed-through - the more saturated and/or darker the pattern is, the more a character's skintone gets covered by that particular shade. Though not entirely, like the original post pointed out. If skin options weren't keyed just to their specific palette we might be able to test this more fully, but the skin palette (which just sounds wrong to type out) was very carefully locked down by the Live devs. They didn't want folks running around 'naked' or putting various flesh tones on non-flesh costume pieces. Which is incredibly hypocritical given the number of nearly naked costume options and the fact that 'non-human' characters can easily be made 'nude' but that's a whole other kettle of catgirls.

 

That might just be how it works due to the way the game handles Skin as a separate thing to Tights (or Not Skin or whatever the code name for it is), but if it is just a matter of opacity... I'm gonna get annoyed that the Live devs never tweaked that. If that won't do it, I do wonder if it'd be possible to make Tights/Non-Skin alt. versions of all the Face options, with the same face texture maps, and if the game would just apply the Tights usage of patterns to them that way. That would require adjusting the palettes though, since any Non-Skin option as is wouldn't be able to select any flesh tones, unless the alt. versions get locked to whatever the current Skin selection is the same way sleeve options in Jackets and Robes do.

Edited March 20 by El D

[biostem]

1 hour ago, El D said:

kettle of catgirls

Should... should we be concerned?  Still, you raise good points!