path: root/README

VanessaE's Unified Dyes
=======================

This is a pretty extensive dyes mod, which has the sole purpose of supplying a 
complete set of colors and a few greys, all of which are intended to be used by 
other mods as needed to make colored objects.  It uses Ironzorg's Flowers mod 
as the source of the actual pigments, which can be had from one of the links 
below.

In total, this mod provides 89 colors and greys.

IMPORTANT: This mod is not intended to suggest that you should use the entire 
palette.  Rather, I was hoping people would just choose maybe the dozen or so 
most useful colors to use in their mods.  The modding template at the bottom of 
this post, while intended to render the entire palette, is still just a 
template - please trim out the colors and shades you don't actually need.

Dependencies: Nature Pack OR flowers

Recommends: buckets, junglegrass

License: For the buckets of paint, cc-by-sa 3.0.  For everything else, GPL.

Install: Unzip the distribution file, rename the resultant 
VanessaE-unifieddyes-blahblah folder to just "unifieddyes", and move it into 
Minetest's mods folder.

Changelog:
https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/blob/master/changelog.txt

The Palette:

[ https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/raw/master/color-swatches.png ]
[ The complete official palette, showing all 84 colors and 5 greys. ]

In the image above, the "50%" markings on the left next to each shade mean 50% 
saturation for all hues in that shade line.  Note that the "light" shades don't 
have (or need) that variant.  For the greys, the percentages shown are of 
brightness relative to pure white.

Usage instructions, technical information
=========================================

Getting Started
---------------

First thing's first: you're going to need something in which to contain your 
dyes - namely, glass bottles.  Making them is very simple: Smelt some sand or 
desert sand into glass blocks as usual, then put one glass block back into the 
furnace to smelt it into a 9-pack of glass bottles.

[ https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/raw/master/bottle-9-pack.png ]

Now, let's fill them up with some dye base.  Take one 9-pack of bottles and 
craft it with one piece of jungle grass and one bucket of water.  The result 
will be nine individual bottles of uncolored dye base and an empty bucket.

[ https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/raw/master/dye-base.png ]

Next, we need to harvest some materials to make the pigments themselves from.  
For this, you need one or more of the following: roses (red), tulips (orange), 
dandelions (yellow), cactus or waterlilies (green), violas (blue), coal 
("carbon black"), or stone+junglegrass+water (white, "titanium dioxide").  
Simply wander around your world and collect whichever of the above you need to 
get your colors.

Once that's done, simply smelt a flower, coal, or stone to get the associated 
pigment.  One flower or lump of coal yields 2 portions of pigment powder, 
cactus yields 6, while stone yields 10 (of titanium dioxide).

Now that you have your pigments, take one bottle of the dye base you made above 
and craft it with one portion of a pigment to get a usable bottle of dye of 
that color.

[ https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/raw/master/craft-red-dye.png ]

When all is said and done, the above ingredients and process can be repeated 
for all 7 of these "root" colors, resulting in...

[ https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/raw/master/unifieddyes1.png ]

The 7 "root" color pigments along with their sources and resultant dyes: Red, 
Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, White, and Black.

The 17 Color standard set:

All colors are fashioned using mixtures of the 'root' colors created above.

[ https://github.com/VanessaE/unifieddyes/raw/master/unifieddyes2.png ]
[ The 12 "full" colors and the five grey shades. ]

These 17 colors and greys can be formed using these recipes:

 *   Red (0°): smelt one rose (yields 2 portions of red dye)
 *   Orange (30°): smelt one tulip (yields 2) or mix red+yellow (yields 2)
 *   Yellow (60°): smelt one yellow dandelion (yields 2)
 *   Lime (90°): mix yellow + green (yields 2)
 *   Green (120°): smelt one cactus or one waterlily (yields 2),
                  or mix yellow + blue (yields 2)
 *   Aqua (150°): mix green + cyan (yields 2)
 *   Cyan (180°): green + blue (yields 2)
 *   Sky blue (210°): mix cyan + blue (yields 2)
 *   Blue (240°): Smelt one viola (yields 2)
 *   Violet (270°): mix blue + magenta (yields 2) 
                    or mix 2 blues + 1 red (yields 3)
 *   Magenta (300°): Mix blue + red (yields 2)
 *   Red-violet (330°): mix magenta + red (yields 2)

 *   Black (7.5%): smelt one piece of coal (yields 2) -- Note that this dye is
                   only used with other dyes, not with the paints.
 *   Dark grey (25%): mix one portion of white paint with two portions of
                      carbon black powder (not the above black dye) (yields 3)
 *   Medium grey (50%): mix one white and one carbon black (yields 2)
 *   Light grey (75%): Mix two white and one carbon black (yields 3)
 *   White (95%): Craft one piece of jungle grass with one bucket of
                  water and one portion of titanium dioxide (yields 1).

The degree figures are the colors' hues on a standard HSV color wheel, and are 
what I used in the textures supplied with this mod.  For the greys, the figures 
in parenthesis indicate the intended brightness of the shade, relative to 
white.  Note that black and white don't go all the way to the bottom/top of the 
scale, as doing so may crush some details in textures made in those shades (see 
below, regarding semi-automatic texture generation).

Darker/Lighter colors
---------------------

To obtain a dark (33%) version of a given color, use two portions of black dye 
along with the base color, which yields three portions of the final color.

To obtain a medium-brightness (66%) version of a given color, mix the desired 
base color from the list above with one portion of black dye (for example, 
medium lime = lime + black).  All such mixtures yield two portions of the final 
color.

To obtain a light (150% over full) version of a given color, mix one portion of 
the base color with one portion of white paint.  Yields 2 portions of the final 
color.

Low-saturation colors
---------------------

To get the low saturation (50%) version of one of the base colors, mix one or 
more of white, black, or a shade of grey with the desired base color:

Dark, low saturation: dark grey paint + color (yields 2), or two blacks + 1 
white + color (yields 4).  For example, dark, low-saturation red = red + dark 
grey paint, or red + two black + one white.

Medium brightness, low saturation: medium grey paint + color (yields 2), or 
black + white + color (yields 3).  For example, medium, low-saturation green = 
green + medium grey, or green + black + white.

Full, low saturation: light grey + color (yields 2), or 1 black + 2 whites + 
color (yields 4).  For example, bright, low-saturation blue = blue + light 
grey, or blue + black + 2 white.

There is no low-saturation version of the "light" colors.

RGB values
----------

All RGB values and filenames for all colors and shades of grey are represented 
in the file "colors.txt" (which is generated with the bash script 
"listcolors.sh"), included in the distribution directory.

Misc. Notes
-----------

If you need to use /give commands, the item names are of the following format:

unifieddyes:{"light_" or nothing or "medium_" or "dark_"}{color}{nothing or 
"_s50"}.

For example, low saturation dark yellow is "unifieddyes:dark_yellow_s50", while 
bright, full-saturation red is simply "unifieddyes:red".  For the greys, the 
names are unifieddyes:white_paint, unifieddyes:lightgrey_paint, 
unifieddyes:grey_paint, unifieddyes:darkgrey_paint, or unifieddyes:black.

See the texture filenames in the textures/ folder for further hints - all of 
the item names follow the same format as the filenames, save for having a colon 
(:) instead of the first underscore (_).

Mods should use the replacements= parameter in their crafting recipes, to 
return the empty bottles and buckets after they've been used.  Something like 
this should do in the case of a bottle of dye:

replacements = { { 'unifieddyes:some_color_here', 'unifieddyes:empty_bottle' }, 
},

Empty bottles can be crafted back into 9-pack sets, which can then be recycled 
into glass blocks by smelting them.


Semi-automatic generation of nodes, crafting recipes, and textures
==================================================================

The modding template
--------------------

Along with this mod, you should also download my modding template, which is 
quite easy to transform into whatever mod you want to create that needs 
unifieddyes.

It's just a skeleton, but all you should need to do to get started is to rename 
the folder to whatever your mod will be named, tweak a few variables near the 
start of the template's init.lua, and follow the above instructions regarding 
the creation of your textures.

If you do it right, you should end up with a very basic mod giving you craft 
and /give access to your various items.  After that part is confirmed working, 
just add whatever code you need to the end of the init.lua to define additional 
functions, items, crafts, and smelting recipes, etc., as needed by your mod, 
and start coding and testing like usual.

The template is configured by default to return the empty glass bottles 
whenever a dye is used.

This template is not supplied as part of the unifieddyes mod, rather you need 
fetch it separately from here:

Download Template: https://github.com/VanessaE/modtemplate/zipball/master
  ...or browse the code: https://github.com/VanessaE/modtemplate

The texture generator script
----------------------------

Obviously, in order for this mod or the above template to be useful, you'll 
need textures.  If you plan to support the entire range of colors offered by 
Unified Dyes, there is a BASH script included with this mod as well with the 
above template named gentextures.sh, which will, with an appropriately- colored 
and appropriately-named source texture, and possibly an overlay texture, 
generate a complete set of colored and greyscale textures.

The script requires bc (the calculator program) to handle some basic math 
regarding the hue adjustments, and Imagemagick's "convert" program handles all 
of the actual conversions.

First thing's first though - you need source textures.  Using your favorite 
image editor, create a single version of your desired texture.  Draw it in the 
brightest, deepest shade of RED you can muster without losing any detail, and 
save it out.  Ideally, you will want the average color of the texture, when 
taking into account all bright and dark areas, to be as close as possible to 
the hex value #FF0000 (0 degrees, 100% saturation, pure red) without losing any 
appreciable #detail.

Save this source texture out as a PNG image, with a filename of 
"whatever_base.png", where "whatever" is the one-word name of your mod - for 
example, mymod_base.png.

If you want to add an image on top of the colored blocks, such as a frame, 
which you want to be the same color throughout all of the textures, create it 
now.  It should consist only of those parts of the textures that you want to 
leave unchanged, with some level of alpha transparency everywhere else, 
depending on how much of the image needs to remain unchanged.  Save it out as a 
PNG image, using any filename you want, for example myoverlay.png.

Now, use chmod to make the script executable, if necessary, and run it.

If you don't need the overlay, you just need to supply one command line 
argument: the base name of your mod.  The script will use that parameter as the 
basis of its texture filenames. For example:

./gentextures.sh mymod

The script will then look for mymod_base.png and copy and convert it into 
things like mymod_red.png, mymod_dark_blue.png, and so on.

If you want to use an overlay also, skip the above step and run the script with 
the base name as the first parameter, and the complete filename of your overlay 
as the second instead.  For example:

./gentextures.sh mymod myoverlay.png

Otherwise, the program will iterate through all of the hues and shades that are 
supported by unifieddyes (though this is done manually, not by reading anything 
from the mod), compositing your overlay image in after the recolor step, if 
you're using that option.

All of the output files will be placed in a new folder, generated-textures/ in 
the current directory.  Note that the script looks for the above files in the 
current directory also.

The script has a third mode as well:

./gentextures.sh -t mymod myoverlay.png

In this mode, the script will leave the base texture mymod_base.png unchanged, 
and instead will rotate the colors of the overlay image and then composite that 
onto the base texture.  The same color changes will happen with the overlay in 
this mode, so it's a good idea to make the overlay some fairly saturated shade 
of red.  Along with that, the base image should be some neutral color; any 
color is fine as long as the result is what you wanted.

The program attempts to verify that the files you've asked it to use will 
actually work, and will exit immediately if the any are invalid, missing, etc.

Use your favorite image browser or file manager to review the results in 
generated-textures/, and if they're right, copy them over to the textures/ 
folder in your mod.