**** PALETTE ENTRIES ****
The following depicts the BG standard colour scheme. Each entry represents one gradient in the palette.
Pure colours:
grey
teal
pink
yellow
red
blue
green
==--
Colour gradients, mixed between pure colours:
grey, teal
grey, pink
grey, yellow
grey, red
grey, blue
grey, green
teal, pink
teal, yellow
teal, red
teal, blue
teal, green
pink, yellow
pink, red
pink, blue
pink, green
yellow, red
yellow, blue
yellow, green
red, blue
red, green
blue, green
==21
To calculate mixed colours, add the two pure RGB values and divide by two. Always round down. Here are the eight mix shades and their correspondence to pure colour shades:
I
3rd
II
4th
III
5th
IV
6th
V
7th
VI
8th
VII
9th
VIII
10th
If you need a mixed shade darker than the 10th, or brighter than the 3rd, you're out of luck.
**** STANDARD COLOUR USAGE ****
For character/monster animations:
GREY - Belt buckles, small metal things
TEAL - Minor clothing colour
PINK - Major clothing colour
YELLOW - Skin colour
RED - Leather colour
BLUE - Armour colour
GREEN - Hair colour (nice!)
**** COLOUR LOCATIONS ****
---WEAPONS---
16 -- GREY
17 -- TEAL
18 -- PINK
19 -- YELLOW
20 -- RED
21 -- BLUE
22 -- GREEN
---HELMETS---
48 -- GREY
49 -- TEAL
50 -- PINK
51 -- YELLOW
52 -- RED
53 -- BLUE
54 -- GREEN
---SHIELDS---
32 -- GREY
33 -- TEAL
34 -- PINK
35 -- YELLOW
36 -- RED
37 -- BLUE
38 -- GREEN
**** COLOUR FALLBACK SCHEME ****
If a colour is not set by the item, it will fall back on the character colour set for its gradient.
For instance, if you have a sword with a pink hilt but don't assign pink a colour, the hilt will always have the major clothing colour of the character who has it equipped (since pink is the major clothing colour on characters). If you change your character's colours, the item will change as well.
If you do have an item colour set, but it happens to be one of the colours you can set on your character (hair, skin, clothing major, clothing minor) it will *appear* to change if you change your colour. It will change on the paperdoll and the avater, but only until a new animation sequence is loaded. As soon as that happens, it is reset to its assigned colour.
Things causing a reload are for instance attacking (loading the attack idle sequence), yawning, waiting, re-equipping the item, clicking on the quickbar.
**** PLANESCAPE TORMENT ****
Planescape Torment uses a different colour mapping system than Baldur's Gate. It more closely resembles the PLT way of doing things in that there are no anti-aliasing colours in favour of more shades per gradient.
The paletted animations of Planescape Torment are all found in the D series. The C series is entirely pre-rendered. Unlike BG paletted animations, they may be partially paletted (that is, part is a selectable colour while the rest is pre-rendered).
The Planescape palette is divided into eight blocks with 32 colours each. Each of these blocks may be used for a selectable gradient or fixed colours. A block always must start at a clean 32 colour interval, so colours are often left blank in between.
The first 32 colours may not be used as a gradient.
Setting the colours is a two step process in PST:
First you set the colours you wish to use. You can set up to seven different colours per animation.
Now you assign a colour placement to each of the colours you set: This determines which part of the palette will be replaced by the selected colour. The placement setting is also a control for special effects (pulsing, etc.).
This means there are seven placement possibilities, though one is unused.
As such the distinctions aren't as clear as with the Baldur's Gate series but there is a general colour scheme as follows:
TEAL 1 - Metal accessory*
BLUE - Major clothing colour
TEAL 2 - Minor clothing colour
RED - Hair & fur, leather**
PINK - Tertiary clothing colour*** (rarely used)
YELLOW - Skin
* e.g. Annah's dagger, Metal on hammer, Dakkon's Blade, Armour parts
** These share the same gradient, but have different placements.
*** Shares placement with leather
Teal 1 and Teal 2 are different in that Teal 1 is not a clear teal gradient while Teal 2 is. In comparison to Teal 2 (0,255,255 -> 0,75,75) it contains some red (75,255,255 -> 0,63,63).