Oh, six new wood patterns. No, wait... itās just one!
I love to recolor patterns. I can only encourage you to try it if you usually donāt! There are many unexpected outcomes that look completely different than the default preset. The recolor options on my more realistic patterns might be confusing at first and it might not be obvious which channel is for what, but take a bit of time to play around to get amazing results! A realistic effect pattern is mostly made up of light and dark and shadings in between. The art of pattern making is to isolate light and dark tones and put them into different channels so you can directly influence them. This lets you play with the color, but letās you do much more, like invert colors for interesting results or choose opposing colors that start to mix and create gradient and grunge effects. Depending on what preset I chose, this also means that they mostly donāt recolor well simply by moving around all colors at once. These take a little more effort for maximum effect. So let me show you how those channels look like and how you can work with them! This is the āriveted latticesā pattern that I made earlier today. The pattern on the first screenshot is the original, all others are recolors. The four channels of this pattern look like this:
Those four channels are layered on top of each other, the fourth lies on top of the third, which lies on the second, which lies on the first. Lightness and darkness define whether an area is opaque or transparent. True white means fully opaque, true black means fully transparent. Whenever there is grey in a channel, it creates a see-through effect based on how light or how dark it is. This means that the color applied to the previous channel will shine through it and even mix with the color applied to the channel containing the grey. In my patterns, the first channel is usually designated to hold the darkest color of the pattern/the shade color. It is almost fully opaque. The tiny black dots in the first channel are a āspecialā way to enhance the shininess of the rivets. I can set a preselected ābackground colorā in the pattern workshop that lies underneath the first channel. Since it isnāt technically a channel, it is not recolorable. Often it is used to make sure that wherever there is an area left without any color in the pattern it does have opaqueness and color since there are no transparent patterns -Ā there is always some color there. Usually, this background color is set to black, but sometimes I switch it to white and use it stealthily like this :) On the wood pattern, the first channel recolors the ridges between the wooden slates. You can either enhance the contrast by giving it a very dark color in the game or create a softer look by choosing a lighter shade. You can also use a very light color and darken the other channels for a cool inverted effect. (See the dark blue wood recolor, the last of the bunch). Sometimes it can create cool effects to give the channels different/opposing colors. This makes them mix and creates interesting grunge/halo effects. (See recolor in the top right). The second channel usually contains different shapes and designs which make up the main elements of the pattern. In this example, it is the main color of the wood slates. It is usually a very light channel/high in opacity. The third channel is often used like the second one, it is also rather opaque and in this case, is reserved for another pattern structure; the rivets. The last channel is usually reserved for a lightening (or sometimes darkening) effect that can increase the depth and strength of the structure of the pattern or lower it. It is an overlay, thus the channel is more transparent in some areas and more opaque in others, increasing effect where it is needed and letting the other channels shine through. Playing around with this channel and different colors can usually give a grungy pop-art look to the pattern, as apparent in the second recolor (third pattern in the first image). Thatās one reason why I love to have many different channels. I try to make them in a way that lets you also adjust the effects to be subtle or more intense, more defined light or less. So now you know a little bit about how I create my patterns and what I have in mind when setting up the channels :) Of course, different types of patterns also have different ways they recolor. Wood, stone and metal patterns, as well as structural fabric patterns, usually recolor like I mentioned here. They tend to have channels to better adjust lightness and darkness. Other more stylized patterns such as the Cath Kidston ones seldom have overlay channels, but more channels that specify different colors like you are used to by EA patterns. Hope this was interesting and you feel more confident to recolor patterns from now on :)
