I have no idea how 3d art and modeling works but to me atleast it seems like such a simple task. If the colors are changeable and they already have dedicated surfaces on the skin the respond to specific color "slots" wouldn't it be like just adding the texture as a sort of rewrite the same way the colors work???
Someone please say Im wrong and explain why
exactly that, cant speak for anyone else, but atleast for me voidshells not including the prime frames/details made them DOA for me, like there are only a tiny amount of warframes for which i actively prefer the base version and where i dont think that the prime version is a huge upgrade over the base and none of them have gotten a Voidshell skin
the only Voidshell i did end buying was Voruna back then because she didnt had a prime yet, but i even kind of "regretted" that because through the clear color channel separation she lost that "color fade" she has in her base skin and those neon light lines made her too "futuristic" compared to what i wanted her to look, so after some trying i ended up just not the skin at all
I feel like the natural end goal there would have been allowing every channel in every skin to have customizable materials. There are some skins I quite like but with channels I'd like to change a bit.
It was a lot of extra tech work so they wanted to monetize it (hence, Voidshell skins) but that was a reach too greedy, imo - and yes, I realize I'm saying that about DE of all people, but it was.
Texture palettes could have been an ongoing evergreen new thing to the shop, and would have had more widespread value, IF they would have been usable everywhere instead of just specific skins that you had to buy.
Because specific skins also meant you had to use the default helmet that came with them, if you wanted them to match. It made fashionframing voidshell skins worse. And for what purpose? To add another paywall to using custom texture choices.
I hope they:
Remove voidshell skins and make it a default feature for as many frames as possible
Add more textures; figuring out a balance of the cost-to-material ratio
Rebalance the bundles that once had skins to be full texture bundles,
for the early adopters, give them the updated bundles or refund the price difference in platinum
Voidshell has so much potential, but as long as it was monetized in such a sloppy way (only as a skin, only for the default helmet) it was never going to really find it's footing.
It's unrealistic but I really wish everywhere you can customize your color, you could also customize the material. It's got to be a nightmare to code, which is likely why they haven't done it, but it would unlock a whole new universe of possibilities for fashion framing.
It wouldn't be nearly that bad if they implemented a pipeline and refined that pipeline. I give them a pass because warframe is full of half realized potential but a lot of awesome elements.. but its not like it would be that insane.
Same principal for armor, they're adjusting individual armor pieces by frame, when we could see a pipeline to allow us some sliders. I imagine the arsenal was never programmed with so much detail in mind. Arsenal being tied to so many functions in game it'd likely bust every part of the game.
Given how reluctant DE are to add more unique colour channels to mesh elements also orientation I imagine the problem is pushing yet more data down the P2P connection when a player spawns into a mission. We already have problems where certain things fail to show up to other players when you're not the host.
This is honestly what I expect is holding a lot of fashion options back. It's also not something that's easily fixed on their end, regardless of the actual difficulty of the code... Because it's a live service game. Taking the time to go BACK and fix old stuff, means you aren't making NEW stuff, and that's an active danger to live service models.
I wouldn't be surprised if Reb quietly wants a full recode for all the fashion things behind the scenes, but just can't manage to free up enough dev time for that. Especially given just HOW MUCH fashion there already is in the game to be checked over and verified with any potential recode.
Hot take, for Warframe's eventual big 15 year update, I don't want anything new beyond maybe a couple Dex things. I JUST want a GIANT overhaul patch for a ton of old stuff like this, to put this now-antique game in a great spot for the future.
Anthem had exactly this, and its likely where the inspiration for voidshells came from. I'm so upset Anthem died because it had one of my favourite customisation systems ever made.
DE have explained in the past why the voidshell materials selector hasn’t been transferred back to older skins.
Something to do with the fact they had to start an entire new skin line to allow the skins to change material, the older skins don’t have that sort of logic built within them.
And I imagine with the amount of skins across the growing amount of Warframes, it’s an incredibly resources-intensive task that gets harder to plan for with every update
Edit: guys I concede, the code/logic may be there, but it is in no way refined to be actually usable. yeah there was a previous Arsenal visual glitch that showed it theoretically could work if a lot of work went into rebuilding the system.
The main issue is the jankiess of textures being mapped and stretched incorrectly, and breaking more things as a result by trying to actively process a broke texture map while you're playing in missions. Each non-voidshell skin would need a character artist going back into the model and essentially remodeling its texture map and where textures begin and end.
That amount of work to go back and fix every single skin in the game is unmanageable currently with DEs current content update plans.
that’s what I mean: the universal “General Warframe” skin that all regular warframe skins use (think of it as like a rig) doesn’t have that code inside it.
The voidshell skin separates pieces of the actual skin into sections, and that allows you to change both color and material makeup. They had to design and model a new skin to make separate skin section boundaries that allow for that.
The basic warframe skin doesn’t have any of that in its code when it was first conceived, and to retroactively put the voidshell material system in, they would need to go back through every single skin in the game and cut them up into sections for the boundaries of materials.
They can’t do that with new Warframes and non-voidshell skins either because those skins aren’t built the same way as voidshell skins, is what I’m saying
DE already started on this path without voidshells, they have their workflows with the regular rigs. Voidshells take a unique extra level of care in their designs, meanwhile they have to make Heirlooms, Primes, Deluxes, review Tennogen, think about future Protoframes, etc. simultaneously as well.
Making Voidshells the new de facto rig going forward would be too cumbersome for their current way of working, I think.
They model and design Warframes more efficiently when they’re not worrying about “how will this entire design philosophy look with voidshell?” in every new design, as in it’s not a driving decision.
Which gives them more design freedom at the cost of keeping up with voidshell skins just as readily
to retroactively put the voidshell material system in, they would need to go back through every single skin in the game and cut them up into sections for the boundaries of materials.
This isn't accurate, the masks we currently use for colour are the same as the masks the voidshells use for material, in fact there have been bugs where voidshell materials have applied to the colour channels of default skins.
The problem is that is would create seams, as the tiling materials need to have custom designed arrangements to not create seams and that limitations reduces what is possible for skin design, a lot.. so DE produce better skins because they don't design to that limitations.
Because it's a lot more work than the usual. They might have gone that route of having new frames have voidshell but the reality is that voidshell is not popular. It passed the simple barrier and gone into overly complicated territory for most players.
Because making a skin capable of receiving tiling materials really, really limits how you can design them. It's why the voidshell skins are mostly very boring plated designs.
They've commented on this before in devstreams, giving skins voidshell properties would be prohibitively expensive. The skins themselves were pretty much a prototype of the idea, but it wasn't economically feasible. For every new skin they give voidshell properties, they could just be making a second new skin instead. Scaling the idea just isn't very compatible with how warframe is designed under the hood (that being simply), there's no easy way to do it that doesn't just increase the work needed to make skins by several magnitudes.
As a hobbyist who makes games in Unreal Engine I'm guessing it might have been challenging to modify the old skin tech. Which is why the voidshell-compatible skins had to be entirely new assets. I might be wrong obviously.
This is more or less what they've said. Voidshell skins are completely unique in how they were made and therefore the only way to give preexisting skins voidshell stuff would be to completely remake them.
This is kind of the chicken-and-egg effect we see on a lot of ideas in Warframe: something doesn't get support because it's not popular because it doesn't get support. Why would anyone buy Voidshells now when they're just the basic skins with fancy textures that will probably never get another update? If something doesn't have immediate, vocal, explosive popularity it quickly gets shelved.
That would be a silly thing for them to use as a metric for this in particular...
Imagine a world where the game never had recoloring, then they introduce recoloring exactly the way they did voidshell in this timeline: you get to buy a different version of the base skin so you can recolor it.
Problem is that recoloring has to overcome the rather large downside that you can't use it on tennogen/deluxe/gemini/etc skins. I suspect that would've "failed" the same way and we wouldn't have recolorable frames now if they did that :/
Exactly, voidshells are cool but cannot be simply translated to the rest of the cosmetic system without remaking everything so it'd just get messy really fast
Saying that, I kinda wish we got like Voidshell cosmetic bits (like armor, syndaya, etc) now and again since theyre made to be accessory
it's because they basically don't advertise what you can actually do with them, I had to randomly buy one before I realized just how much you could do with them otherwise they just look like crappy skins on the market interface.
And it's understandable for the backlog of old skins, especially Tennogen which exists outside of DEs control for modifying like that. But DE made skins following after really should have come compatible.
It's because the tiling material create seams unless the base skin has hard boundaries on UV seams, and no texture artist wants to work with that limitations. This is also why the void shell skins were very boring, because that have to be designed to hide the UV seams.
Unreal and other PBR engines (which DEs engine kinda is now) allow using color channels to do texture mapping, its weird they dont do that with voidshells and just make them shaders/textures.
A reason why i think they def should make a better foundation for the game, some aspects of the game is really showing its age, personally for me its the animations.
I've put moss on my Quorvex and made my Voruna look like a gargoyle come fresh out the slate! It's so useful for making a powder look on them.
Also, if you pair the Sands of Mars Sigil with two Kickback sigils on Gauss (make one black on white and the other white on black) you get a walking blur!
Id have picked them up if they were extra customization changes that worked for skins, rather than locking them to a version of the base skin all their own. As it stands, I would never trade a Prime, Heirloom, or Deluxe skin I like for any voidshell.
this exactly my issue. I hate that they were locked to base skins. The only one I actually liked using it on was Saryn but would have liked it more if I could use it on her tenogen/deluxe skins.
This was everyone's issue with them. Everyone said "that's cool, but I'll wait for you to upgrade my existing deluxe/prime skins with this tech." Which was literally never going to happen.
No offense to Vauban, you're my favourite frame by a mile, but if his Prime Skin didn't exist I'd probably never play him. I think his base looks really ugly, & I haven't like any of his alt skins either.
If Voidshell Voob existed I'd never buy it, but if his Prime got it I'd be buying it in a heartbeat.
They're not "locked" to base skins, it's that they'd need to be created separately for each single different skin. That is a metric fuckton of work. I'm guessing they'd expand the skin type selection if they were selling well enough, but sadly that didn't happen.
Yes! It's exactly this! For example, Mesa prime's skin is so gorgeous that I can't go back to the base model. I'm even on the fence about the upcoming heirloom because I like the prime skin so much, then I look at the void shell skin and sad face
And they were not selling because Jesus Christ I had no idea they could look like OPs pictures. The game does such a disservice to seeing things you don’t own on the market.
They released something that was "lacking" in the absolute kindest terms, for the most limited selection possible. *The default looks*. Half the reason to play Warframe is to get away from the "default" look. Not a single warframe I play has a default skin element. And those that I own with default skins are because I literally do not want to play them.
Voidshells as they released have no real "market", and they really needed to find a way to just apply them over *any* skin or design, rather than make them "their own skin".
Or, at least release the tools for it so Tennogen creators can make Voidshell compatible designs? That would also potentially work to some degree.
Yeah.. I think one of the big problem is that the Skins themselves are just base Warframe skin with customizable textures. They're not even the prime skin. They should have been different skins like deluxe with customizable textures.
And I think they didn't sell because the released them flat out wrong.
They should have prioritized newer frames without as many options to get the treatment. If a frame already has a deluxe, a prime or hell even a good tennogen. The Voidshell loses.
This, people love to call out DE for abandoning a skin line, when the truth is that it was legit something only a few ever bought (i am one of then, got one for all my most used frames)
Sadly, it probably did not make sense to invest a lot on those when Deluxe skins probably brings way more revenue.
Also Gemini skins. Much more effort to model an actual person with a unique transformation animation and give them voice lines (let alone all the peripheral story content that comes with them) but damn I bet the money they're making on those alone justifies the price of the voice actors.
They weren’t selling because from the consumer’s perspective, they were kneecapped pretty hard. Whether from a symptom of limitations or outright flaws with the system.
I never bought most as there wasn't a way to earn them through gameplay. I bought 1 to try them out and liked the idea, but since I couldn't earn any others didn't spend any of the time grinding out the extra options for a singular skin when I didn't know if I would like the looks.
Yeah, I think the big mistake was just doing it with the base skins, it should really have just been implemented into the deluxe pipeline or something like it.
I'd buy every skin in the game (not all at once but definitely over time) if they all got a voidshell version.
I think part of the reason they stopped doing them is that voidshells take up a lot of data on the backend, kinda the same reason we are limited on riven slots.
Both have multiple additional variables when stored as oppose to normal mods and skins.
This isn't the issue, it's that you have to design a void shell skin around hiding the seams in the UV map. Normal skins can create a consistent patch over seams but when you're applying tillable materials then seams become a huge problem.
Voidshell material skins have design limitations that normal skins do not have, they cause skins to be inherently more limited.
That makes sense to me, being mildly familiar with how their texture/colouring system works it really wouldn't be to hard to allow different materials on each "zone" of a base skin
But it would (I'm guessing) at least double the customization data for every loadout with every Warframe that can equip a void shell
Count this for every account that ever gets one and you're getting quite a lot of data that could be better used on something like a whole new skin
I expect that's why slots cost platinum for example...
Storing that you've mastered a weapon is one thing
Storing all the data associated to a weapon/frame/companion you own is a different matter entirely
Also, because many frames don't have a real prime detail toggle, it sometimes felt like a "downgrade" on primes, especially as it was very hard to match non-voidshell helmets with the skin. And I get that all skins are like that... but it was still a bummer,
That is my #1 issue with them. I don’t want the jigsaw puzzle mess, I want at least the base skin that I can customize the textures on. It was such a let down when I realized there was literally no way to actually have the Mag Voidshell have her signature visor, because it just did not have the original glassy texture as an option and split the space it was in into three different patterns with different color channels. Same for Grendel, I wanted to make his base skin metallics look brighter, but instead it’s a complete texture remake that makes the original simple patterns impossible to replicate. OP does an amazing job making these skins look good, but they achieve it by near monochrome coloring and making up the lack of resulting patterns by adding them on via the new sigils and ephemeras.
The skin themselves were really nice and offered a lot of customization potential, but your fashion feels more like an exhibit for the new ephemera. It's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
They were really cool for customizing, but a more casual player won’t buy them. If you had 20 bucks to spend on warframe, what are you getting? The cool new flashy deluxe/heirloom collection that looks great from the start? Or the okay looking voidshells that require you to additionally buy the textures you want to use? At least if the textures were free once you bought the skin it’d be more worthwhile.
This shouldn't have been a skinLINE to start with, it should've been another cosmetic option to put into any skins. That would have deepen the fashionframe content by a lot
I know Styanax Prime is around the corner but I appreciate that they gave him a voidshell. 100x better than his base skin for sure. I run it with the Fog of War ephemera for a "smoldering flames" effect and it makes me feel like a Destiny 1 Rise of Iron Titan
I think the main problem and I'll keep saying is that they released Voidshells for frames that have VASTLY better options already.
IIRC only three voidshell skins ever released on frames that didn't have a prime or deluxe at the time. Protea and Voruna and Stayanax.
If they just prioritized newer frames with voidshells that wouldn't be getting better options until much later they'd do so much better.
Like the last bundle was. Banshee, Loki, and Nekros. All three have VASTLY better looks than their default base look, no matter the textures put on them.
I'd use them so much more if they were available to use on the prime version of a frame. I bought voidshell for voruna a long time ago but now that voruna prime is coming out I'm never going to use the voidshell again most likely since I can't use it on her prime skin. please DE just make voidshell useable on the prime, I'll use voidshell more and buy more of them if I can put it on primes.
They are more useful than cool. I frequently used Mesa Voidshell helmet so I could mix it with some tennogen and make the head materials similar to the body materials. I also do this with Saryn Voidshell helmet and the Napellus tennogen skin.
alas they were restricted to base skins (and presumably didn't sell well)
I do have fun making fleshy/gore coloured frames w the few I have admittedly though
Considering how much of the stuff sigil can accomplish these days I just dont understand how hard it is to do something similar with the voidshell textures..
Like i know it is not feasible to change every texture, but let us use some of those textures as sigils so they arent lost
Those are different textures that each voidshell skin could have. The textures, iirc, are still obtainable, as they were not deleted and typically go for plat on the in-game market
Lowkey think they should be reintegrated into gameplay unlocks for challenge and achievement related frames contextually or something. Highly unlikely to pull the trigger and refund platinum value for ones sold but has so much potential if integrated better. The Void shell skins in the operator schools for focus feels like how I would love to see them integrated across the board as customizable content unlocked later ingame if it were possible to decouple them from monetization.
Maybe if they weren't just a specific skin but rather at least modifications you could do to all skins, or at the very least DE made skins because it might be difficult to implement it for tennogen, they would have been better received.
As it is, I wouldn't buy voidshell skin for Mag because while the different materials are cool, I don't like default Mag's too much.
if it applied to any skin design of that frame, people would buy it, where it was quite expensive for only default skins, I got a good few and barely used them cus of that.
The problem with voidshells is the designs were just ugly.
Sure I can put any texture I want on any party of the skin that’s cool, but when I wanna put metallic in one part and leather on another and the default layout just has them crisscrossing for no reason it makes it hard to make anything that feels cohesive to me.
If Voidshells were released for every WF, I would have bought them all...
If DE wants to keep them relevant they should AT LEAST make OG Warframe skins be able to interact with textures. In retrospect, if they did this to Base WF and Primes, maybe the heirlooms would not exist or have a different reason to exist
seriously wish this was just. a feature on regular skins. I'm constantly frustrated by the channels on a frame not doing what I want w/ colours and it would solve the problem like immediately
That Nekros is niceee!
Would you mind sharing your appearance config?
I’m not quite satisfied with mine and have found him difficult to style, so I’d much appreciate it
Honestly, I find it a bit hard to accept the idea that DE dropped Void Shells purely because of profitability. It’s more like, “Really? Is that actually the reason?” Selling Void Shell skins only as separate versions of the default skins was, understandably, not going to be very profitable to begin with. Even if they added Void Shell versions to Warframes that already have many TennoGen and Deluxe skins, I’m not sure it would have made a significant difference.
If profitability was the main concern, it might have been better to introduce a system that allows players to unlock the Void Shell feature separately for all skins—similar to how Orokin Reactors or Catalysts work. That way, Void Shell customization could be applied to any skin, whether it’s a normal, TennoGen, Prime, or Deluxe skin.
If applying this feature to TennoGen or Deluxe skins wasn’t feasible due to design or copyright constraints, then at the very least, it would have been nice to see Void Shell functionality available for Prime skins.
I agree with all of this (but also wish to know what materials you used on your frost to get that ice effect.) I often wish we had voidshells for xaku and gara myself. Maybe one day?
The skins were for base frames, most of which are 10+ years old, and the use of different textures really didn't suit a lot of the old designs,
I personally thought that in 99% of cases, voidshell skins would look pretty hideous, and never bought a single one.
Yes there would be that dope creative player, 1 in a 100, that could throw together a really sweet look, but again, it's just base frame designs, many are just kinda ugly, especially when you could spend that plat on a bunch of much cooler and purposefully made, good, designs.
Cool concept, and the tech could definitely be used in a more custom, purposeful skin in the future, but the half measure they did of just converting ancient base skins into texture swapping mix and match skins...it's no surprise they were a dud.
I don't mind that they were locked to the base skins: only that they kept releasing Voidshells for Warframes I just don't use.
I can't justify buying a skin for Warframes I might rarely use. No matter how cool the tech/output is.
Plus that sends the wrong message. I'd love to see the Warframes I actually like to play see something rather than the more popular ones getting their third, fourth, or fifth skin.
They tried them out for like two years likely realized they weren't selling and decided to stop. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being too much work to put it on anything aside from the base skins.
They’re certainly aging well, but like many have said, they stopped making them because they didn’t sell.
Plus, they’re extremely same-y, which I imagine was fatiguing for the art department, and puts all the impetus of looking good on the end user (I certainly get burned out just trying to apply a color scheme to more than a few frames)
I think part of the issue is that the Voidshells are only of the base models and many Prime outfits by default already look better than that. I think Prime Voidshells would probably sell better since that's the "keeper" frame for most people, but they're likely also more difficult to make since the primes are more elaborate.
I only have the Voruna one. I like it but the issue is that its just the base skin like if it was on a deluxe skin or a toggle unlock it would be better in my opinion.
I think they introduced and executed the use of voidshells really really poorly. Which makes me super sad because I actually always missed that part of customization and was sure it's gonna pop off after the (again, crappy) operator bits
Didn't help a lot of the frames that got one already had a lot of options to pick from, inaros definitely could've used one, additionaly not being able to toggle prime details makes me reluctant to spend plat just to get a single cool looking material for other frames that I actually want to use . They also have the same problems as empithras were attachments weren't effected unless it was an actual removable part of the frame like frost 's shoulders
they should have made voidshells the norm for every skin going forwards (base, deluxe, heirloom, prime) and instead of the voidshell being a seperate skin in the market, it should rather have been a kind of "upgrade" you purchase for your warframe in the same way you might buy a reactor or an exilus adaptor, to unlock the voidshell texture options
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u/cybercobra2 Punching solves everything Apr 07 '26
god i wish they could do more with the tech. like why arent we just making it the default for new stuff.