I was just thinking how, when creating patterned parts, dual molds, assembly shortcuts &c., we need to create separate parts for every color combination. (See for example the many variants of the early named beams, e.g. this one.)
This gave me an idea for a new meta command, which I can only imagine would be no more complicated to implement than, say, the BFC commands. Something like this:
Say you had a pattern with color 0 (black) and color 15 (white), this would re-map those colors to 4 (red) and 14 (yellow), respectively. That way you wouldn't need to author a separate version of that pattern using colors 4 and 14. You also wouldn't need, necessarily, to subpart the pattern into individually-colorable elements. As a result, it would also cut down on the number of library files, to the extent that that's a concern anyway.
Another obvious use would be to create minifig torso and leg assemblies in any conceivable color combination, using just a single shortcut file.
(I assume that "_NEXT" would be the most commonly used scope, so perhaps it could be omitted. But you could also have "_BEGIN" and "_END" variants, allowing you to recolor a whole model in one go.)
Anyway, as I always say I'm no programming expert (nor barely even a novice), so I can't say for sure. But it seems like this would be no more difficult for a parser than flipping the winding of vertices at runtime. And it certainly wouldn't break any existing functionality—you could always create hard-coded versions of any patterns you create this way, either by authoring new parts or by inlining and embedding them (using a sufficiently capable editor of course).
Thoughts, suggestions? I'd actually be surprised if I were the first to come up with this, so maybe there's a reason it was never considered before…
This gave me an idea for a new meta command, which I can only imagine would be no more complicated to implement than, say, the BFC commands. Something like this:
Code:
0 !COLORMAP_NEXT 0 4 15 14Say you had a pattern with color 0 (black) and color 15 (white), this would re-map those colors to 4 (red) and 14 (yellow), respectively. That way you wouldn't need to author a separate version of that pattern using colors 4 and 14. You also wouldn't need, necessarily, to subpart the pattern into individually-colorable elements. As a result, it would also cut down on the number of library files, to the extent that that's a concern anyway.
Another obvious use would be to create minifig torso and leg assemblies in any conceivable color combination, using just a single shortcut file.
(I assume that "_NEXT" would be the most commonly used scope, so perhaps it could be omitted. But you could also have "_BEGIN" and "_END" variants, allowing you to recolor a whole model in one go.)
Anyway, as I always say I'm no programming expert (nor barely even a novice), so I can't say for sure. But it seems like this would be no more difficult for a parser than flipping the winding of vertices at runtime. And it certainly wouldn't break any existing functionality—you could always create hard-coded versions of any patterns you create this way, either by authoring new parts or by inlining and embedding them (using a sufficiently capable editor of course).
Thoughts, suggestions? I'd actually be surprised if I were the first to come up with this, so maybe there's a reason it was never considered before…