Dyes, Dyeing and Material Consistency

disky · March 15

I spend a lot of time planning and creating looks for my characters, and the choice of styles that ESO provides to the player is truly vast, which I appreciate very much. However, an issue frequently arises when creating looks which can cause frustration. When an item appears to be crafted from a certain material, like leather for example, it may not actually dye in the same way as other leather items, or, it may not have the same shaders attached, meaning it doesn't have the same reflection/visual material properties as other leather items.

It's very possible that I'm mistaking the intention of the designer and that the item is actually supposed to be made of some non-leather material or a type of leather that has different properties, but I really wish there were a way to change the shader style on an individual piece in order to create a look which matches the outfit without spending so much time seeking out a dye which applies properties that make it look close enough.

I'm not sure if this inconsistency is due to an improvement in shaders over time without replacing shaders on older pieces, or if it's just that I'm mistaking the materials for something else, or even if there just is no policy of keeping material shaders consistent across styles, but it happens quite a bit more than I'd like, and if there's not going to be a consistency pass for this kind of thing then I'd like to request an option to be able to swap materials out for other types. I wouldn't expect the ability to swap cloth for metal, just similar types. For example:

Type 1: cloth/fabric/leather
Type 2: metal/bone/horn/chitin
Type 3: crystal/glass/pearl/magical/emissive

I'd also really love a way to preview dyes that we haven't already collected, in order to find out whether it's something that works for the outfit we've created. This feels like a pretty important part of the dyeing system and I've never understood why it hasn't been implemented.

Also also, please, pretty please, give us the ability to dye channels which are currently undyeable. I tend to avoid styles which have things like gems that cannot be color-swapped.

colossalvoids · March 15

That's an annoying issue indeed, had a similar topic not long ago with the issue being one of the pain points

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/674234/easiest-win-for-eso-fashion-enthusiasts

Definitely think those inconsistencies can and should be solved, for example having new channels in dyeing station with material meshes you can apply below the dye like generic leather instead some random glossy plastic it was or different types of metals, etc.

xylena_lazarow · March 15

colossalvoids wrote: »

Definitely think those inconsistencies can and should be solved, for example having new channels in dyeing station with material meshes you can apply below the dye like generic leather instead some random glossy plastic it was or different types of metals, etc.

This would be awesome, this style feature was recently introduced in Warframe's cosmetics system, you can acquire special skins where each dye channel also has a material channel, allowing you to choose texture, gloss, etc.

colossalvoids · March 15

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

Definitely think those inconsistencies can and should be solved, for example having new channels in dyeing station with material meshes you can apply below the dye like generic leather instead some random glossy plastic it was or different types of metals, etc.

This would be awesome, this style feature was recently introduced in Warframe's cosmetics system, you can acquire special skins where each dye channel also has a material channel, allowing you to choose texture, gloss, etc.

Didn't heard about that one before, cool that it's a working solution in a pretty popular title to look up.

katanagirl1 · March 15

Definitely agree with this. Also, it may be too late to do now, but it would be great to have the first dye channel be the largest area of material on the piece, the second the next largest, and the third the smallest area like trim. That way you could switch one color on one piece without having to figure out the corresponding channel on another piece (if you decide to change that color on all pieces of the outfit.).

Each style should have the same dye channel pattern. Right now the dye channels seem to be assigned randomly, if there is a reason it is not obvious to me.

The problem with that for existing styles would be any changes would change what you are currently using and require updating.

EDIT: typo