Please be aware that maps & avatars for the RPR is still heavily under development, and any information provided here may change before official launch.
Palette
We are using the Liberated Palette by Eliza Wyatt as the basis for our map & avatar assets.
We are able to support assets that use additional colors. However, our "official" assets will strive to stick to the palette colors as much as possible, and all colors should at least work well with the Liberated Palette.
Basic palette
Palette organized by ramps
Palette demo
Color ramps for clothing
Color ramps for hair
Starter designs
After much trial and error, we recommend that you design your assets that you intend to offer in all of the officially supported color ramps in the following colors:
- Clothes: white palette
- Skin: ivory palette
- Hair: blonde palette
These brighter palettes tend to have the greatest contrast between the darkest color and the lightest. When converted to palettes with more subtle ramps, they still tend to look great. Whereas when you design something using a subtle ramp and then convert it to one with more contrast, you often end up with glaring "hot spots" that you didn't intend.
Automatic recolors
With 75 "official" color palettes for clothing, and 20 for hair, that is a pretty daunting number of recolors for artists to try to create if they want to offer all of them. This subdomain features recolor tools, one for clothing/accessories and another for hair styles. Just draw your accessories using one of the standardized palettes, such as "apple." When using the recolor tools, just make sure to pick the right starting palette so the tool can do your recolors for you.
Slots
At present, the following "slots" per avatar are planned:
- shape
- head
- eyes
- eyebrows
- facial hair
- glasses
- torso
- neckwear
- legs
- jacket
- hair
- hat
- butt
- shoes
- belt
- back
And are meant to be layered in roughly the above order.
Most of these are fairly self explanatory. Shape refers to the body of the avatar. The "butt" slot will most likely be used primarily for attaching tails, while the "back" slot might be for cloaks, backpacks or wings.
Frames
All necessary frames for an avatar are stored within a single file. Each full body frame is 64 x 64 pixels, with one direction per horizontal line.
On each line, the frames are as follows:
- idle 1
- idle 2 (this is a slight tween between 1 & 3)
- idle 3
- walk 1
- walk 2
- walk 3
- walk 4
- walk 5
- walk 6
- walk 7
- walk 8
- floor sit 1
- floor sit 2
- chair sit
After the four lines of full body poses, there are 18 32 x 32 pixel frames that contain expressions, which are as follows:
- eyes half closed
- eyes closed
- shocked
- (NEW LINE)
- angry
- sad
- happy
For the expressions, in general you should plan to draw your accessories ONLY where there are already pixels.
Compatibility
Some accessories may have restrictions in how they are intended to be used. For example, you might draw a dress that includes the outline and shading for breasts, and therefore will not work well for the flat chested body. This is perfectly fine; artists will be able to specify what other parts an accessory will work with.
You may also note that the eye shape is slightly different for the "elder" head" than it is for the younger heads, and therefore only certain eyes will work with the elder head.
Full-body costumes such as a floor-length ballgown will most likely go into the "torso" slot, even if it also includes covering for legs. In such a case, it may be necessary to override the "legs" and/or "shoes" slots entirely, preventing them from being rendered so there isn't a pair of boots hovering in front of your hem. There are plans to cope with this.
Custom Avatars
For fully custom avatars, you may use the full 64 x 64 space of each frame to draw your character as you would like them; this may include them being shorter, taller, wider or skinnier than any of the standard avatars. Include all hair, clothing and other accessories in the one file. Custom avatars will not be created through layering accessories, but uploaded as-is.
At some point in the future, a doubled avatar size that utilizes 128 x 128 frames is anticipated, so you may also wish to experiment with that extra space for large wingspans, gargantuan characters, etc.
It may be that custom avatars get an opportunity for custom poses as well, which will be in the frames after the two laying down poses. See example below.
