Self-Style Hair Kits & Total Makeover Kits not working correctly

[Booey Bubblehead.4890]

I have changed my hair color three different times using Self-Style Hair Kits and the color of the hair does not come out the same once the change is applied. The color has been darker every time I apply the change vs. the preview. As a last ditch effort, I tried a Total Makeover Kit to get the hair color that I wanted (the same as in the preview before accepting changes) but that did not make a difference, it still comes out darker. This is on a human with one of the Elonian hair styles.

 

I also had a guildy who just used a Total Makeover Kit on their toon and they had a similar experience, his was on a charr.

 

Is this a known bug?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Ambient lighting affects colors. Try moving to other places to view your character.

 

Good luck.

[Booey Bubblehead.4890]

I did that as well, still not coming out the same as in the preview.

[Shikigami.4013]

This is a general issue with lighting and the game engine I believe. When I dye my mounts they also never look exactly like in the preview. Actually any preview that I can think of (including armor dye) seems to have a very specific generic lighting which for me never looks like in the game world. Also, any other light sources like auras, other items on your character etc are ignored in the preview which makes getting the desired look very hard in some cases.

 

Depending on ambient light the sleeves on my mesmer which are colored with the color "Golden Lion" can even become blue instead. The image on the right with little light is just a few steps away from the image on the left where sunlight comes in. And in the preview window they don't look like either the first or the second image ><

 


[Khisanth.2948]

The one area in the game that is closest to the previews is the inside of Honor of the Waves's entrance but even that is still slightly darker.

 

[aikatara.3462]

I feel your pain. I struggle with that issue regularly and thought about posting in the forums because of it at times, but never did. Because ultimately there might not be a solution for the problem. Therefore my apologies for the wall of text that follows.

 

Three things affect the way a hair colour looks ingame (as stated above).

 

1. The first is the ambient lightning, which is the reason why quite often the hair colour looks differently in the preview window then in the game. And of course the ambient lightning can be very different in different areas, so the colour shade changes somewhat depending where you are.

2. The second thing that affects the way hair colours look are the shader settings (in the options menu - by default at F11), since they affect the lighting. With some hair colours there is a huge difference who the colour looks ingame, depending on the fact if you set your shaders to low or to high. With some hair colours a changing of the shader settings can make a HUGE difference to the point where a colour that looked dark red on low shader settings looks suddenly almost white on high settings.

3. The hair styles also have an influence on the matter. Some hair styles are more affected by the way the lighting changes the hair colour than others. Unfortunately one can only identify those who especially reacts to the lighting by try and error.

 

The shader issue of course only affects you if you switch back and forth between graphic's settings ingame, which I do. Ever since the visual effects of bosses got more flashy and affect my game's performance I constantly change the graphic's settings depending on where I am and what I do, so some of my character's hair colours change depending on what shader settings I currently use.

 

Solution:

There is none.

 

* Advice: DON'T start to switch between shader settings (as I do), since it will drive you insane (because the sometimes HUGE difference in how a hair colour looks. Better pick one shader setting and stick with it).

* If you pick a hair colour in one of the kits take into account that the hair colour looks different ingame. If you have observed that they always look darker ingame you can try to guess what colour shade you need to pick to get the colour you actually want to have in the game.

* What I sometimes do is to create I new character and have a look how the hair colour behaves in the starting area of the character. Of course this only works with the vanilla hair styles and colours. I can do this because I have a key farm character who gets recreated on a weekly basis anyway.

 

What sucks about the whole situation is that every use of a hair style kit costs money and it happens that you put a lot of thought into the question how the hair colour might look in the game and it still looks differently (and not the way you wanted) when you finally use the kit.

 

I guess best thing to do would be to simply accept the fact that there is a certain random factor involved when it comes to hair colours. When the hair colour of my latest Charr character showed a far deeper red than I had intended ingame I decided that apparently he wants to have such a hair colour and does not take my opinion of the matter into account. And who I am to argue with him, it is his hair after all ;-).

 

But yeah, if you are an altoholic as I am this is a constantly reoccurring issue.