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Posted by automatoney 6 hours ago

Show HN: Simple algorithm and color space to generate diverse skin tones(toneyalexander.github.io)
Hello HN!

I found that picking out plausible but diverse skin tones for my digital art and game development projects was kind of difficult, and I got curious about if there was a way to define a color space that made it easy.

I've built a color picker and procedural generation algorithm based on the space as well as a bunch of other fun js features and demos throughout the page that use the equations. If you find it interesting, I have lots of explanations of how I built it and what properties the space has.

The methodology might be a bit shaky, but hopefully the result is as helpful for others as I have found it! There's lots of room for improvements (see the Future Work section), but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

371 points | 83 commentspage 3
RIMR 5 hours ago|
For anyone confused, turn off your dark mode extension. :)
automatoney 5 hours ago|
Oh wow, didn't even think of how that sort of thing might affect the page.
ptsneves 5 hours ago||
On the movie Dolemite by Eddy Murphy, they go over the fact that black people absorb light and white people reflect, and how that changes the motion picture shooting process totally. Also how one size does not fit all. Cool project! I am not much into the humanities part of the project. For me this is as natural as having a localization framework, just in this case for skin tones.
zetanor 3 hours ago||
Setting R² to various large values like 50, 500 and 5000 then moving the slider around seems to give a decent and simple visual representation of what's happening.
efitz 5 hours ago||
Never seen anyone #E6FFF8 (bottom right corner).

An albino that consumed too much colloidal silver for years?

JacobAsmuth 2 hours ago||
Me after I spend a day at the beach: #BA3A17
hluska 5 hours ago||
This is excellent work! You’ve got a 49 year old and a 10 year old equally into it. That’s impressive - nice work.
aaroninsf 4 hours ago||
Not my domain though I followed the data science enough to nod as if I really followed it,

but this is just lovely and inspirational work. A unique marriage of hacking in the celebratory sense, thoughtfulness, and meaningful contribution. Outstanding.

automatoney 4 hours ago|
Wow what a touching compliment, thank you so much!!
bellowsgulch 5 hours ago||
Skin is so interesting as a surface to think about how light passes through and bounces off of.

There is at least one article published by a technical artist at Pixar who describes modeling a skull within a human scan so that subsurface lighting is more accurately rendered.

I suspect you could combine this with dr_scully’s comment and GolDDranks’ to reach the nuance involved in long tail realism details.

automatoney 4 hours ago|
There's a lot of really good research papers that touch on this area from what I saw - would definitely be cool to see if that extra nuance could be added without dramatically increasing the math complexity; in its current state, the code could be used in any programming language without a library.
Abh1Works 5 hours ago||
Cool work!
ralusek 4 hours ago|
If you're ##CCFFFF please go to the hospital
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