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Palette Variants

Palette variants are one of ArcBrush’s most powerful features. Define a palette of named colors, wire it through Palette Remap, and automatically generate every color variant of your asset.

The potion example: one source image plus a 9-slot Palette, wired through Palette Remap, produces nine recolored variants on a single Batch pin — ready for Export Batch.
The potion palette-variant graph in ArcBrush: an Image In node loading purple_potion.png feeds a Palette Remap node; a Palette node of nine named color slots feeds its palette input; and Palette Remap outputs a batch of nine recolored potions on a single Batch pin into an Export Batch node. The viewer shows all nine variants — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, cyan, magenta, and pink.

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”
  1. Create a Palette node with named color slots (e.g., “Crimson”, “Cobalt”, “Emerald”).
  2. Connect your source image to a Palette Remap node.
  3. Connect the Palette to Palette Remap’s palette input.
  4. Palette Remap generates one variant per palette slot, shifting hue and saturation while preserving luminance.
  5. Connect the Batch output to Export Batch to save all variants as named files.

Key Concepts

Section titled “Key Concepts”
  • Luminance preservation ensures highlights stay highlights and shadows stay shadows. The recolor looks painted, not tinted.
  • Named exports turn each palette slot name into part of the filename (e.g., gem_crimson.png).
  • Live updates mean that changing the source art or the palette causes all variants to regenerate automatically.
  • Palette From Image can auto-extract colors from any reference image to use as your palette.

Common Workflows

Section titled “Common Workflows”
  • Game assets: One item icon → 12 color tiers for rarity levels.
  • Brand assets: One design → variants in every brand color.
  • Character art: One character → color explorations for different costumes.

Palette Remap vs. Color Remap

Section titled “Palette Remap vs. Color Remap”

These two nodes sound similar but solve different problems:

  • Palette Remap is the variant generator. Wire in a Palette and it produces one image per palette slot, output on the Batch pin. Use it whenever you want a set of recolored versions of the same source.
  • Color Remap is a single-color hue/saturation shifter. Wire in an image and pick a single replacement color, and it produces one image on the standard image pin. No Palette node, no variants, no Export Batch.

If you want N variants, reach for Palette Remap. If you just want to swap one color for another in a single image, Color Remap is simpler and faster.