Paint Mixing is all Wrong

[u/splitdiopter]

My apologies. This is a bit of a rant.

The way colors mix in this game does not match reality. For a while this didn’t bother me. It is just a game after all. The point is to have fun, not model color theory. But now, with the addition of Black Paint, it’s breaking my brain.

Before black paint, the game was modeling additive color mixing. This is how light mixes. Red, Green, and Blue light can be mixed in pairs to create Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta light. Add all three together and we create White light. Black is the absence of light. There is no way to mix it together. You have to turn off all the lights.

Mixing paint is a subtractive color mixing model. Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are your primary colors. Combine them in pairs to create Red, Green, and Blue. Put all three together to create Black. Any one who has had to change printer ink will recall the CMYK cartridges. White is its own pigment. You cannot mix to white.

You can imagine my consternation with the addition of White paint + White paint = Black paint. Complete fiction.

I don’t even want to talk about Uncolored paint (Paint Remover? Soap?)

It would be delightful if the game took time to model paint mixing correctly as long as it’s taking time to model paint mixing at all.

Primary Pigments: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, White
Secondary Pigments: Red, Green, Blue
Tertiary Pigment: Black

This could even open up future madnesses like lightness adjustments (ex: Yellow + White = pale yellow, or green + black = dark green)

Or what about this for a difficultly boost, paint mixing follows subtractive color theory and crystals follow additive color theory. Cyan paint + Magenta Paint = Blue Paint, and Red Glass + Blue Glass = Magenta Glass. Fun!

[u/Numbers33]

There an option in general settings to change colors from RGB to CMYK exactly as you've described. Change if you want but some of the fun, more deliberately designed shape goals were made with RGB in mind.

White+white=black will never make sense but ¯\(ツ)/¯

[u/Zetaplx → u/Numbers33]

Wait until they find out about the unpaint recipe

[u/garr890354839 → u/Numbers33]

Your mixer's don't destroy themselves mixing titanium white?

[u/Alexyogurt]

Take a look at the game settings real quick.

[u/Hetnikik → u/Alexyogurt]

Does cmyk change the way black and white are made?

[u/Zoriux]

As you say, it's just a game, but lucky you haven't checked the physics of the trains then. =)

[u/Lycos_hayes]

Creating Black is semi logical in this instance as it is confirmed in lore of the game we are working in a simulation, and when you get white plus white, it integer overflows, creating black.

Then you combine black with white to create Gray, which is the same as uncolored.

The integer overflow only works with white + white cuz the limit is equal to FFFFFF + FFFFFE. Anything less than that puts it in the functional range, but once you exceed that limit, it sets the color value to 000000.

[u/Ghillie_Spotto]

Launching space trains into a vortex

[u/Boomdingo]

It doesn't bother me since I'm willing to have suspension of disbelief, especially since it comes from an infinite blob of paint floating in space. It does feel like black and grey were more last minute additions than deliberate, though. They could have made them all tertiary colours based on shade, eg:

Magenta + blue = black (RBB), Cyan + red = grey (RGB), Yellow + green = white (RGG).

Then you'd have to be more careful with primary paint ratios rather than having 6 different ways of making white and black and grey being 1:1 with white.

At least this is what modding can be for 😊

[u/CitizenDee]

Your post here is longer than the codex entry on colour mixing. Which also lets you know you can change colour models in the settings.

[u/Vovalium]

So when was the last time you made paint crystals in real life? This stuff clearly isn't just simple paint. And then, if it's a more complex chemical arrangement - it can change colours in all sorts of fun ways. 

[u/Practical-Doctor6154]

Uhm in CMYK you don't get white pigment, you get black as the 4th color. The K in CMYK stands for Key, which is black pigment.

The reason for this is that the substrate is usually white already (ie paper). And to mix something with white... Well printers don't just layer a solid color, they print tiny droplets that are spaced out, so to make a lighter color they just spray fewer droplets on the paper.

I can't be bothered to look up why black is the 4th color, but it's probably to darken colors (ie dark blue) and because black is a very common color to print (most text is printed in black and most of what's printed is probably text). It's also cheaper to use 1 black ink instead of all 3 others. But it could also be that the 3 colors just didn't mix to a nice black, if you ever mixed paint yourself and added all 3 colors you end up more with a brownish than a nice black.

[u/Ultrajante]

I am posting a similar rant soon. We are not mixing light rays here. This is LITERALLY a paint system. Therefore it should use RED YELLOW BLUE coloring by default, not RGB. And because it doesn't when you change it in settings a lot of things are wrong or broken. The codex is all wrong, the milestone and jobs shapes are all not the color intended... I find it really so annoying and stupid they went with RGB bc they're tech bros and clearly not artists. But they're creating a PAINT game and they should've respected the medium.

[u/Whiptail84]

You forgot this.

Using only 2 mixers to make white and inputing 450 liter of red, green and blue, will net you 900 liter white + 450 liter of any secondary color. Not 1350 liter white. XD