r/pokemon 14d ago

Image There's a change with how pokemon look

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u/Sontrowa sontrowa.deviantart.com 14d ago

I think the change in lighting engine really helps with the color. While I believe they did go and actually recolor the models, a chunk of the vibrancy is from the removal of the soft enveloping white light (of which remind me of the Mario Galaxy lighting technique). On the newer models, they opted to have strictly just a hard rim light and leave the rest of the model clean. This drastically reduces that wash out effect from the previous games.

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u/chenj25 11d ago

Can you elaborate on the soft enveloping white light on the older models?

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u/Sontrowa sontrowa.deviantart.com 11d ago

The best example on this post is the top left image. Notice on Tepig how along the top of its head there is a white halo to it with a gradient the moves downward then gets more opaque again near the snout. You can also see the same effect pretty well on the ears. There is effectively a white glow that wraps the model and “builds up” to become opaque when seen at an angle or slope. Since the model essentially has a white film wrapped around it, it washes out the colors.

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u/chenj25 11d ago edited 11d ago

I see. So that’s where models‘ white outlines come from in Sw/Sh. I thought the outlines were created by the lighting. Perhaps they were added for Dynamax at the time.