Catalog user-generated content is amazing and gives creators more opportunities to create & gives users more customization to express themselves through their virtual avatar.
One problem I have with this is how many colors/variations there are of the same item. This issue makes it more difficult for me to actually find clothing I’d like to wear, and reduces the quality of the catalog with copy & paste items, even though that’s not the intention of these recolored variants.
Take the recent Layered Clothing feature for example - Jackets being shown here. Many of these are the same item, just recolored. I love having multiple variations of the same item as I sometimes will find something I really like, but it’s not in a matching color for my avatar.
While I was going to jump to the conclusion it might be better if all of these are under one card where you can view multiple variants of it on the item’s page (think like Amazon), I request that users are given the ability to be able to adjust the hue, saturation, and value of any equipped accessories, clothing, you name it.
This would not just greatly reduce the need for color variations, but also make it easier for everyone to be able to express themselves. This could even eventually be branched into other adjustments, such as transformation/offset (ex. hat/hair blending), which has long been an issue, even before UGC came out. For my own use case, I enjoy a certain shade of blue in my avatar to match with everything else, and while I’ve found a few accessories that would look great, they sadly didn’t match well due to this diversity issue.
I do think this should also be up to the creator as well (opt-in/out), but as you know, implementation isn’t my concern here. I just hope that this could be considered as it’d add a whole new level of avatar customization, and it would be very much appreciated.
Notes:
- By recolor, I mean a hue shift, which is why I placed it under Engine Features since I don’t think that’s possible currently, only changing all colors in the clothing is. Think of the hue shift in Photoshop.
- I didn’t feel comfortable using the default feature request format since I believe this represented the community as a whole more than me as a developer, and it’s difficult to limit it to that scope.