Fixing 1.5 Ship Colouring

[Magical Chicken]

Spoiler: Rant to paradox:

What happened Paradox? 1.5 did so many great thing but ships just seemed to get mostly overlooked. The new colouring mechanic was a great idea but it was just so poorly executed.
Molluscoid and Reptilian textures were well done. You clearly put effort in and it shows. The rest... not so much. You started to do the mammalian diffuse textures then just stopped after doing 4. As for the rest, nothing was changed. Yes due to your shader it works in the final game (this honestly surprises me) but it barely works.
All entities have not been changed meaning flashing lights and engines are all the wrong colours. The scanning cone has the same problem as well. Yes trails are finally fixed but that is it.
Also the mammalian construction force-field which you could have finally fixed is still as broken as ever.
There are also a bunch of errors with specific textures (such as the circle on top of the mammalian science ship not changing colour).
These are things that could probably be solved in a few hours but it just seems you couldn't be bothered which is a bit depressing.

For those who cannot be bothered to read my rant above I can simplify it into 2 sentences:
"Ship colouring is unfinished. I do not like that."

Why this is in the modding forum:
I will now attempt to fix the colour inconsistencies because it triggers me.

Spoiler: BTW

I do not hate Paradox, in fact I love them. Which is why I find it so annoying when they produce something unfinished and not up to there normal amazing standard.

 

[Magical Chicken]

Some of the basics done:

Spoiler: Mammalian Science Ship

Before:

After:

Spoiler: Mammalian Construction Ship

Before:

After:

 

[Velho e Bom Joe]

Very nice!
How does the Ship shader work, by the way? I've noticed that it seems to care only for the Hue element in a typical HSL scheme (brown and beige both turn orange, for example). Though that could be due to the colour mod I was using.
Also, is it possible to use the Flag's secondary colour too? I was slightly disappointed that it had no effect no the ships. It would be nice to have some stripes somewhere with the secondary colour.

 

[Magical Chicken]

Very nice!
How does the Ship shader work, by the way? I've noticed that it seems to care only for the Hue element in a typical HSL scheme (brown and beige both turn orange, for example). Though that could be due to the colour mod I was using.
Also, is it possible to use the Flag's secondary colour too? I was slightly disappointed that it had no effect no the ships. It would be nice to have some stripes somewhere with the secondary colour.

The 'PdxMeshShip' shader is responsible for colouring (as far as I am aware). It uses both the specular (orange-brown hue) and normal (blue - this conveniently also indicates lighting) to colour ships using the primary colour. How paradox has managed to do this, I am not entirely sure (I am unfamiliar with shader files). The shader file is located here if you want to have a look for yourself:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stellaris\gfx\FX\pdxmesh.shader

 

[Velho e Bom Joe]

Oh, I also don't have much of a clue about shader files.
I only dealt with them in node-based editors, not raw code.
Hmm, Interesting. While taking a look at the shader file, it seems that they intend(ed) to put secondary color, as it is in a To Do list. I wonder if they didn't do it because there are no channels available on any texture (diffuse RGB is color, Alpha is opacity; Normal map's channels are all used now with Blue being emissive; and Specular's Red is now used for faction paint as well). Creating another texture map for colors would not be performance friendly, probably.

By the way, on the mammalian construction ship's force field, did you color it on the specular map or on normal? its colour looks kinda "dim". Did you try painting it on the normal map so as to make it more glowy and vibrant?

 

[Magical Chicken]

By the way, on the mammalian construction ship's force field, did you color it on the specular map or on normal? its colour looks kinda "dim". Did you try painting it on the normal map so as to make it more glowy and vibrant?

I have now made the normal map more 'blue' but it has had little effect.

Spoiler: Updated

While the recolouring is working well the transparency seems to be making it appear to be a different colour.

Also I just noticed when your primary colour has an s value of 0 secondary colour is automatically used to colour the ship.

Spoiler: Example

 

[Velho e Bom Joe]

Huh, indeed, it's probably the opacity that stops the field from glowing, seeing that everywhere else the blue channel makes it glow.

I really wish I could understand those shader files, and see where the secondary color info is coming from and making it be an option on ship painting.