🪅Colour Choice & Strategy

Learn to use colour like a pro, whether you want to choose from the Sandbox Extended Palette or create a custom palette of your own and develop a unique art style for an Experience.

Light & Colour in The Sandbox

Learn about managing one palette in the Modeler's Palette Panel.

Learn about managing multiple shared palettes in a compound or animated asset in the Animator's Library Panel.

Reference: Colour in VoxEdit

Reference: Colour in VoxEdit

↕️ Hue Selection

• Hue is the colour base

↕️ Light ↔️ Saturation

• Saturation is intensity

• Lightness is:

  • ⬆️tint (whiter)
  • ⬇️shade (blacker)

Emissive Colour (Toggle)

This button switches the colour into a mode that creates the illusion of casting a glowing light from the asset when used in an Experience. Tip: To make an asset shine light on other assets placed in an Experience, use Light behaviour.

Colour Differences

Emissive Colour Differences

QUALITY ASSURANCE

Colour and emissive glow may appear different between VoxEdit, the Marketplace, and in the game world of Game Maker and the Game Client. Test assets thoroughly for game world quality. The graphic below will be updated soon to reflect recent updates to the ecosystem.

Below is a helpful comparison of how some colours and emissive glow will appear in different software of The Sandbox ecosystem.

Different software on our platform handle light a bit differently. Aim for the desired result in Game Maker.

Light Behavior

New Light Behaviour

Game Maker's Light behaviour may affect the way assets appear depending on the light's colour, intensity, and other settings.

Light behaviour can be used to make the emissive colours of an asset seem to shine their light onto other nearby objects to make a scene feel more natural since assets do not emit light onto other surfaces.

Example:

The image on the right shows how light in an Experience changes the apparent color of the asset.

Marketplace light emission not shown

Game Maker light emission

Game Maker light emission & light behaviour

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Colour Theory

A colour sphere (below) is a 3D representation of hue, saturation, lightness, and darkness.

• Hue - the pure base of a colour

• Tint - lightness applied to a hue

• Shade - darkness applied to a hue

• Saturation - the intensity applied to a hue

Attribution: Created by SharkD CC BY-SA 4.0

A colour wheel (below) is a simple 2D visual aid that arranges colour by wavelength. It's useful for selecting colour combinations that can be adjusted in lightness/darkness and saturation to create the mood for your art.

A variety of colour strategies are shown below: primary, analogous, secondary, complimentary, square, and split complementary.

​Beginnings of Colour Theory (Source: Hongkiat.com)​

​Cohesiveness

EXPERIENCE ART & NFT SALES

Create a unique and cohesive art style for an Experience or a group of related assets to sell on the Marketplace so they blend together quite well.

An easy strategy for creating an attractive palette of colours that work well together:

1. Pick a hue combination (above)

2. Set saturation and lightness for mood

3. Make multiple colour blends with different hues, but similar saturation and lightness

VoxEdit allows for 5 custom palettes per asset in the Animator (one palette per model).

Troubleshooting Colour

Sometimes an asset just doesn't look right and it's hard to figure out why. Use the ideas below from Designmantic to try some potential solutions.

Right Click this Image from Designmantic to see it at full resolution in a new tab.

Adding Colours from Screen to Palette

To save time with pre-made palettes, you can find many resources online, such as Color Hunt.

Then you can either copy the colour code shown and paste into VoxEdit's Material Panel or use the new colour picker button in the Palette Panel to add any colour from your screen to the selected palette swatch.