User:GHawkins/PaintGuide

When I said the painting guide was a work in progress, I meant it . . .

Welcome to the Painting Guide. My name is GHawkins and tale 6 is my first time in the sands. With the help of various pages on the wiki and Ofalot's conversation turned into a guide, I was able to use Paint Watch and PracticalPaint to work out a great set of paint recipes. However, I found all individual sources of information to be incomplete and still had to work out several things for myself. As such, I've decided to bring everything together into a single illustrated painting guide to help make it easier for anyone who hasn't worked out their recipes to do so.

Creating your painting recipes is a lengthy and detailed process, but since the recipes which work are tied to your character name, the recipes you develop now can be reused each and every tale (unless Teppy decides to mess with us all). Additionally, every avatar has different recipes, so you may be able to make paints your friends can't, and even if you can both make the paint, you might be able to make it with less costly materials.

This guide is designed to walk you through the steps of working out your recipes. First, I discuss the mechanics of the painting system. Second, I walk you through the steps of how to get your reaction values using the Paint Watch .lua script which can be found in Veggie Tales. Third, I explain how to work PracticalPaint to use those reaction value to build your recipes. Lastly, I offer some advice on tweaking your recipes to get them working correctly.

Painting Theory

To mix a paint, you'll need access to a Pigment Laboratory and a variety of ingredients to make the colors.

When you complete a paint, its named color will be based on what idealized color the paint's real RGB colors are the closest match to.

Ingredients are divided into two general classes, bases and catalysts.

Base Ingredients

A base is an ingredient which lends its RGB values directly to the color of the final product. When you add a base ingredient to the lab, it creates a weighted average of RGB values with the other ingredients in the lab. In addition, a reaction might occur which will alter the final RGB value. Each base ingredient you add increases the concentration of the paint by one, and you cannot complete the paint until you increase the paint's concentration to at least 10. You can however continue adding ingredients beyond 10.

The base ingredients and their RGB values are:

Ingredient	Abbr.	Red	Green	Blue
Cabbage Juice	CJ	128	64	144
Carrots	Cr	224	112	32
Clay	Cl	128	96	32
Dead Tongue Mushrooms	DT	112	64	64
Toad Skin Mushrooms	TS	48	96	48
Earth Light Mushrooms	EL	128	240	224
Red Sand	RS	144	16	24
Silver Powder	Au	16	16	32
Lead	Pb	80	80	96
Iron	Fe	96	48	32
Copper	Cu	64	192	192

Catalysts

A catalyst does not modify the color value average, but does cause reactions. Adding a catalyst does not increase the paint's concentration.

The catalysts are Sulfur (C:Su), Potash (C:Po), Lime (C:Li), and Saltpeter (C:Sa)

Because they do not modify the color value average, they do not have RGB values.

Reactions

Reactions are the most complicated part of painting, but in order to perfect your recipes it's absolutely critical that you understand how reactions work and calculate your own unique reaction values since they are different for each character.

When you combine certain ingredients into the paint mixer, a reaction can happen. Reactions affect the paints final value after the weighted average of base ingredients has been calculated. Reactions can affect Red values (R), Green values (G), Blue values (B), or all three values equally (W).

Reactions are additive, so if you have 1 reaction which increases the Green value by 12 and a second reaction that increases the Green value by 23, the total reaction will be 35G. If a reaction increases the Green value by 12 and lowers the White value by 18, the net effect will be -18R -6G -18B.

Every player's reaction are unique. Hence, if a paint recipe includes a reaction, then someone else's recipe may not work for you. However, there is some consistency with reactions. Every reaction for every player will affect the same color, but what is different is the magnitude. The table below has a complete summary of all reactions.

	CJ	Cr	Cl	DT	TS	EL	RS	Pb	Ag	Fe	Cu	C:Su	C:Po	C:Li	C:Sa
Cabbage Juice				B		G	G			W	W		B
Carrots				R	W		B	W					W	G
Clay					R	B		B	B		R	G			B
Dead Tongue Mushrooms	B	R			G		B	G		B	B		B	W
Toad Skin Mushrooms		W	R	G				W			W		R	R
Earth Light Mushrooms	G		B				R	G		R		R	R
Red Sand	G	B		B		R			R
Lead		W	B	G	W	G			G	B	W				G
Silver Powder			B				R	G		B	G				G
Iron	W			B		R		B	B			G			W
Copper	W		R	B	W			W	G			W			B
Catalyst: Sulfur			G			R				G	W		G
Catalyst: Potash	B	W		B	R	R						G
Catalyst: Lime		G		W	R
Catalyst: Saltpeter			B					G	G	W	B

The order of ingredients matters for reactions. For example, if you first put Cabbage Juice in the paint mixer and then Red Sand, the reaction you might get is 18G. However, if you put Red Sand then Cabbage Juice in, the reaction might be -4G.

An ingredient put in the mixer can react a number of times. For example, if you add Red Sand into the mixer followed by Cabbage Juice, Carrots, and Dead Tongue Mushrooms, you'll get the RS->CJ, RS->Cr, RS->DT, CJ->DT, and Cr->DT reactions.

However, any given pair of ingredients will only react once. So in the example above, if you were to later add one more Red Sand, you would not get the CJ->RS reaction since that pair of ingredients has already had a reaction.

Example

Now, let's see how that all works out in practice by using a simple example.

//Work in progress//

Now that we've seen how the process works using my reactions, let me show you how you can find the values of your paint reactions using Paint Watch.

Get your reaction values Paint Watch

//Work in progress//

You're off to a great start. Now that you've got the numbers, you can work out a lot of recipes yourself using trial and error. However, there's literally infinite possible combinations of quantities and orders you can work through, and thousands of plausible ones. Sure you could to that all by hand, but for brute force calculations, that's what computers are for . . .

Brute force to victory with PraciticalPaint

//Work in progress//

Now you've got a big list of paint recipes, but you're not done yet. You probably noticed while working with Paint Watch that the numbers it returns are only estimates, so when those numbers are fed into Practical Paint it might not quite work out. Therefore, you need to test your recipes before calling them done and firing up a batch of 100 at your local Pigment Laboratory.

Getting it Right

//Work in progress//