Tau Skin Colors
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Table of Contents
Different Shades for Tau Skin colors
Just show me the stuff!
Here are a few discrete colors that we use in the Killteam Generator for Tau.
Vallejo Azure
Vallejo's Azure is the commonly accepted default Tau skin tone. But it is more of a desaturated azure. To illustrate this, here is a gradient from Vallejo Azure to regular Azure. Which is useful for finding highlight colors.
Want more colors? Read on!
Skin Pigmentation Generalization theory
Human Skin Colors
Human skin color is determined by a complex set of factors. The most obvious is melanin in the skin, of which there are two types: Eumelanin (brownish pigments) and Pheomelanin (redish pigments). If we use the LAB color model, we can easily convert a color into theoretical melanin counts. This is overly simplified, but will work fine for our use case. LAB color model is based off the biology of the human eye. L is how much the Rods are activated. A is how much the red/green cones are activated. B is how much the blue/green cones are activated.
L (lightness) can generally represent how tan the skin is from sun exposure.
Pheomelanin=(B-A)/2
Eumelanin= A + Pheomelanin
Tau Skin Pigmentation assumptions
If we assume that Tau epidermis is also colored via 2 main melanin types, we can assume their equivalent of Pheomelanin is blueish pigments and their equivalent of Eumelanin is greenish pigments. These can be converted in the LAB color space simply as well.
Pheomelanin= -1 * A
Eumelanin= -1 * B
Putting all this together gives us a way to convert human skin tones into their Tau equivalent skin tone.
Update: I swapped Pheomelanin and Eumelanin to get colors closer to the commonly accepted blue tones.
Human tones to Tau tones conversion
This is just a sample and not exhaustive. I literally just googled "human skin tones hex codes" and threw a bunch in here. In reality there are over 100 different, unique human skin tones
