So a friend and I were talking about the difficulty of using Celestial Garb on the Lupes because it tends to lose contrast easily, even when other traits are looking great. I figured I'd play with the generator and find out the best way to get around this (IE, if AC2 being darker than M1 will always make it functional) and as soon as I started I was... well. This:



I'm going to use Mystic Ribbon as a comparison point for why this is such a pain in the butt. It's cloth, it has a blend of M1 and AC2, it's a well-loved trait, and it will show exactly why Celestial Garb makes it harder than it needs to be to find a set of M1/AC2 colors that work on all traits...



0029A3 / 0029A3
Celestial Garb (identical colors, has contrast)
Mystic Ribbon (no contrast)


0029A3 / 3D92DB
Celestial Garb (near invisible contrast)
Mystic Ribbon (actually has a little contrast!)

0029A3 / 80B7E8
Celestial Garb (small improvement...?)
Mystic Ribbon (great contrast!)

Inverse the colors and it looks great! But then you're stuck with dark AC2 for almost every other M1, M2, and M3 trait. Why should I have to sacrifice what I want for almost every other mutation just to make ONE technically flawed but otherwise beautiful trait work..?

80B7E8 / 0029A3
Celestial Garb
Mystic Ribbon


Other color examples:

FF0077 / FF0077
Celestial Garb
Mystic Ribbon

FF0077 / FF73B4
Celestial Garb
Mystic Ribbon

FF73B4 / FF0077
Celestial Garb
Mystic Ribbon


So my initial thought of "AC2 being darker than M1 to make it work" was correct... ish. I like to be thorough so I tried again with a black base... Now the opposite applies!


0029A3 / 0029A3
Celestial Garb (Identical colors, near invisible
Mystic Ribbon (just blah anyway without contrast.)

0029A3 / 80B7E8
Celestial Garb (hey, this works now!)
Mystic Ribbon (lookin' good)


80B7E8 / 0029A3
Celestial Garb (... meh?)
Mystic Ribbon


So NOW, with a black base, AC2 being darker than M1 = bad.


Now let's apply this to a theoretical theme idea, one that's intended to work well with any trait combination. "Theoretical Sunrise Lupora"

Mystic Ribbon
Mystic Ribbon and Husky.
Good and good. No issues caused by the trait. Everything is fine. Great mutation. Technically sound.

Celestial Garb
Celestial Garb and Husky.

Good enough and... no. Add husky and the swirls are harder to see. They were already fairly hard to see, but now it's just an epic failure.

Maybe reverse the AC2 with the mutation colors..?
Celestial Garb
Celestial Garb with Husky.
Hah! Oh that's funny. No, no, definitely no. It got worse.


And just to point this out, the colors used are yellow and peach. Two different colors should NOT have this much trouble contrasting each other.

FFD97A F59D7A

On everything else - EVERY other mutation with any trait combination - it works without any trouble. Except for Celestial Garb and its weird insistence on "if you want to go subtle my colors shall be a blob, so forget all those pretty mutations you just previewed and start over to suit ME! >:P "

Celestial Garb can be pretty but it's so difficult to work with when designing themes. I would love it if there could be some sort of change to it to make it easier to work with.

I miss the high contrast distinction between the cloth and the patterns on it of the old celestial garb honestly


vs

(and proposed theme updates of these two's themes:


only the proposed tree moss really has good contrast for this particular trait if you ask us)

Just adding a real, non-theoretical example since I have once again run into such an issue with Celestial Garb...

I'm designing a Silver Thistle Lupora, and I want Mystic Ribbon to resemble the colors of the petals shifting very subtly from off-white to off-grey.

Looks great! Exactly what I want it to be.



So now on to other mutations. Broken Shackles? Fine. Dragon Scales? Subtle. Go darker...

Mystic Ribbon again! As dark as I can possibly make it to still work with how I want it to be.


Broken Shackles is still good. Dragon Scales is improved. Spring Flowers is friggin' amazing!!

... Celestial Garb.



*flips table*

How dark does it have to be to finally work, I wonder...

696051? Not quite.
40392D? ... yeah, that'll do.

Now how does Mystic Ribbon look...?



*finds another table to flip*


It's NOTHING like what I want anymore.... So screw it. Celestial Garb will just have to suck because it's own technical flaws. -__-

I made a made-up theme and I think the Celestial Garb worked fine.

https://imgur.com/xKMlqgd

(But I am no expert so...)

Oh the trait can work with the right setup; I've got plenty of designs made with it myself.

The problem is that it's harder than it NEEDS to be. I shouldn't have to repeatedly rework the M1 and AC2 and sacrifice the appeal of all the other M1 traits just because Celestial Garb looks like trash while the rest look perfect. It's flawed on a technical level, both because the transparency reduces the M1 color's saturation too far and because the AC2 is stacked right on top of it rather than being isolated, giving you a blended result of the two colors. The best fix I can image would be taking the M1 color AWAY from the AC2.

This, for example.
Chosen colors on the left, perceived colors on the right.

M1: FF0000 / EF98A0
AC2: 1500FF /5D2CAF
*Hex codes for the perceived colors are taken from the pet's image being posted on paint and the color picker being used to get the RGB details; from there it's easy to get the hex codes.



My red is now pink. My blue is now purple. These are not the colors I chose, and this is not what I want.


Now view Mystic Ribbon. I have my red. I have my blue. It isn't pink, and while it does have an added purple color it's used as a blending point and it doesn't completely remove the blue. This is what I want; these are the colors I chose. Why shouldn't Celestial Garb do the same?

Ooooh. That makes sense. I like the transparent effect on the trait, but seeing now their are problems with it. I haven't run into this yet since I've kept the Celestial Garb the same color in almost every design I've made with it. I'll definitely mess with it in the generator to see.

(I like the pink and purple coloring, but it does seem very annoying for it to not be the same color that you chose.)

I think I know why it looks pink though. It might be because of having the rest of the sylestie as white. When I was first messing with the garb on my "Jade Kitsune" Lupora(my made-up theme) and I hadn't given it it's body color(orange) yet. The garb was a lighter color of green than I had intended it to be.

Made changes to Celestial Garb.

Please let me know what you all think.

Transparent M1 for the scarf, transparent AC1 for the scarf's blend and normal AC1 for the attached beads, EC on the stars, and, best of all, AC2 isolated and nontransparent for the swirl.

I likes.

A few projects made need a little tweak or to drop the trait from the gene-pool if I have an alternative already there.Silver Bells can just stick with Mystic Ribbon; Solar Flare is going to need a rework requiring me to switch the M123 colors with the AC2 color as well as changing AC1 which will lead to needing to change the G2 and G3 as well and omg this is going to mean 7 colors to change on over a dozen lupes *brain explodes* x__x


... but the rest are greatly improved? Lunar Priest, Celestial, Neapolitan, Reef Guardian, Starlight... And this trait is a now a dream to work with on the generator for new designs...

Worth it.



(Now to find a way to salvage the Solar Flares that doesn't reduce me to extreme poverty...)