Art Masters Guild

The Stillwater Art Masters Lectures

presented by Sigil and broadcast on P! April 11, 2009

Sigil: Greetings. I get a lot of questions about paint in general, and practicalpaint in particular, for starters, you can get PracticalPaint on my user page on the wiki. To use paint, you'll need the Science of Color from a UArt, and a pigment laboratory to work with

The goal in paintmaking is to mix ingredients to get the results as close as possible to different colors that probably bears some explanation: if the final mix of your ingredients is closer to one color than any other, then your paint will be that color for example, if you mix up ingredients such that they have RGB values of 129, 0, 0, you'll have 'dark red' paint. if it has an rgb of 135, 0, 0, you'll have 'maroon' Sigil: each ingredient has a basic color associated with it. Carrot, for instance, is 224, 112, 24, which maps to the color "Carrot", amazingly enough In its most basic form, paint involves mixing ingredients, and taking the weighted average of the values so, if I take 6 clay and 4 iron, I would expect a red value of 115 - ( 6 * 128 + 4 * 96 ) / 2

But, that's not enough to get most of the colors, so we also have what are referred to as 'reactions' Sigil: clay and iron don't react, but clay and copper do. So, if I mix clay and copper evenly, I would expect to get a red value of 96, which is halfway between 128 and 6, but, clay and copper have a reaction which changes their red value. When I put clay in my lab first, and then copper, I don't get a red value of 96 - I get a red value of 148

When I put copper in first, and they clay, I get a red value of 106. This means that I have, in common terminology, a clay->copper reaction of +52 red, and a copper->clay reaction of +10 red reactions are cumulative, but only occur once per batch and only in one direction, so if I put clay in first, and then copper, and then more clay, I only see the +52 red reaction, not the +10 one and if I did clay, copper, toad skin, I'd get the clay->copper reaction, the copper->toad skin reaction, and the clay->toad skin reaction.

Ok, are there any questions at this point?

BlueGrass: is there a verson for Mac users? Numaris: Or Linux? :) Sigil: it's built in .NET 3.0, so you might be able to run it under Mono. my earlier version worked that way. Don't expect any support though - I don't have a readily accessible linux or mac box to work with

Hanid: Is it the result of the first reaction that reacts with the next ingredient or the previous ingredient only? Sigil: ok, Hanid, let's say we do A, B, C ingredients Sigil: you'll get the A->B reaction, the A->C reaction, and the B->C reaction

Rabble: And paint recipes are different per toon, right? Is it just the reactions that differ or the RGB values of the ingredients? Sigil: rgb values, and the 'type' of reaction between the ingredients are constant across the game for example, copper and clay always have a 'red' reaction. What differs is the strength and direction of that reaction - those are individual to an avatar. So I might have clay->copper of +52 red, and you might have -60 red for the same scenario.

Sigil: Ok, so measuring reactions: You'll notice on the paint lab, that there are 3 color bars, one for R, one for G, and one for B. The length of each line tells you how far between 0 and 256 that component is. It's not exactly 1:1 pixels to points, so you have to do a bit of math. But, if the line is half full, the component is 128. if it's 1/4 full, the component is 64. etc. I find the most efficient way to test a reaction pair is to put in component A, test the colors (write down as color 1), then put in component B, and test the colors (color 2), then clear out the pigment lab with clay or whatever else you have on hand, then start over putting in component B, test the colors (write down as color 3), and then put in component A, and test (color 4). Your 'expected' value is ( color 1 + color 3 ) / 2 and your reaction for A-B is color 2 minus that average. your reaction for B-A is color 4 minus that average.

Sigil: questions? Catlyn: But what is the mechanic you use for measuring the length of the bar? Sigil: I personally use 'Pixie'.[1]. I find the coord of the left end of the bar, the coord of the right end of the bar, and the coord where it changes from the color to the background so I might find that the left end of the bar is at coord 10 on the screen, and the right end might be at coord 260. if the colored part of the bar ends at 135, it's right in the center, so that would be a color component of 128

Hanid: When using practical paint, which spread sheet do you recommend? There are several floating around Sigil: I've actually never seen any of the various spreadsheets that people use for this, I'm afraid. I do it by hand in Excel, myself. If someone is experienced using those sheets, an explanation from them would be great Hanid: For what it is worth I used a spread sheet and then rplaces the values in the one that came with practical paint line by line.

Hanid: What can you do through practical paint, when one or two results aret found? Is that because all paints can not be made by all avatars? Sigil: Well, if you've run it at depth 8 with all ingredients, and it missed a color, you're probably out of luck with that color. Some people's reactions are not conducive to certain colors, and a couple of the colors are really picky.

Numaris: What does "Bulk/Normal" mean in the in the ingredients file? Sigil: 'bulk' means that it always tries the max amount in recipes. normal means that it obeys the maximum that you set

Blessed: every time i paste reaxtions.txt to reactions on cabbage and red sand it paste is as ok, -41 why is the ok there? Sigil: are you talking about the results of a spreadsheet, Blessed? Blessed: yes in excel, when i paste it to pp to the reactions notebook Sigil: not a clue. you could try just typing it in. it's just a standard text file

strutter: does practical paint have a problem is you add extra spaces or tabs when editing the data files, and does the order of the items matter? Sigil: normally it strips out spaces and tabs. sometimes special characters give it problems though order of the items does not matter at all

Tula: So is the order you add ingredients suppose to matter or not? Sigil: that makes all the difference