User blog:Trainsparency/Christmas 2017: The issues with the gifts, and our solutions

It has been an (expected) tradition every year that several gifts be released in LT2. Some of these gifts—such as the Wobbly Gift of Uncertainty and the Happy Red Gift of Fun—have been released as a differently colored variant annually. Every of these gifts have something very important in common, though, and that is their textures. In 2016, the mentioned gifts had their textures recolored in a way that did not have any major difference in quality. The Jingly Gift of Jingles and the Sweet Gift were also new gifts added to the 2016 line, both of which had unique and (somewhat) seamless textures, but more importantly had relevant and soft colors.

Unfortunately, the 2017 line of gifts disappoints these factors because they are of less quality, are extremely bright, and have odd or irrelevant textures. But with only a few simple fixes they could be given the quality they need to make this christmas one that lives up to the tradition the previous years have set. Many of them are not made by Defaultio, but by the ROBLOX user "Christopherdaiz," who did not retexture the gifts correctly.

This was one of the first few gifts to be added in the 2017 line, and was retextured by Christopherdaiz. A green ball is not a bad idea in any way, and in fact is likely the best color choice to choose for this year (as it would match the "Strange" theme presented during the Halloween update.) Unfortunately, the gift is excruciatingly bright and lacks much of the original texture quality.

In the presented image, in order, is the Happy Red Gift of Fun (original), the Happy Blue Gift of Fun, the current Joyful Green Gift, and our remastered texture of the Joyful Green Gift. After studying the textures, you can clearly see that the actual Joyful gift is very poorly made. The ribbon is missing it's texture, the colors of the dots are solid and are very pixelated, and the entire gift is extremely brightly colored). This is because Christopher had not recolored the parts of the gift using either the recoloring tool or image recoloring tool, but instead had used the PAINT FILL TOOL to recolor the bow and polka dots. If you aren't familiar with this tool, it is commonly used in most paint softwares (ms paint, paint.net, gimp, etc.) which fills a select region with a solid color. This tool resulted in all of the mentioned flaws. Where is the "high-quality charm?"

On the other end, our revamped version of this gift fixes these flaws. See it here.

This was also one of the first few gifts added in the 2017 line. It is evident that this gift will also open to a wobble. Unfortunately, Christopher extended his use of the wretched paint fill tool unto this gift, too, and the results of that are very visible.

In the image, in order from left to right, is the Wobbly Gift of Uncertainty, the Wobblier Gift of Less Certainty, the current Wobbly Gift of High Confidence, and our remake of the latter. First and foremost, the ribbon on the current High Confidence wobble is the exact same as the ribbon of the Wobblier wobble, and further shows Chris' neglect of the texture. The ribbon is supposed to be the same shade as the original wobble (the 2016 wobble was confirmed to be a mistake.) Secondly, the main texture of the gift is GONE. It is, as anticipated, filled over by Christpher's horrific use of the paint fill tool. Moreover, the color he filled it with is a BLINDING neon green, and piled up in the back of a Val's pickup truck, seems like a bucket of candy.

Our revamped version of this gift can be seen here.

This gift was quite a surprise to us when it came out (not in an entirely good way, that is.) However, it is clearly an axe gift, as it's shape suggests. Every year, there is an axe gift, though it is irrelevant to compare their textures because they have nothing in common other than shape. Initally, we thought it would be something along the lines of a "start times axe," though recent evidence shows that it may (fortunately) be something less outrageous.

In the image shown, from left to right, is the original Great Times gift and our remastered texture. Yes, they may be completely different, and there is a simple reason for this—every part of the original texture is flawed! Firstly, the dots are quite strange; they are very pixelated (some having black pixels,) they are not centered on the line, and they appear to be irrelevant. They aren't even spherical! Also, the background of the gift is a BLINDING neon yellow that contradicts the soft, clean colors of the 2016 and partly 2015 gifts. The bow of the gift is also flawed: it does not stand out, as a bow on a present should, and it is also yellow, which makes it indistinguishable from the wrapping paper. There is nothing relevant or calming about this gift texture, and it seems like a blatant sign of neglect for this year's christmas.

Our revamped version of this gift fixes these issues and adds a neat clock wrapping paper with a red bow, see here.

Every year there has been a completely unique gift that follows no tradition. These are some of the best gifts because the range of different ways they could be made is nearly limitless. Unfortunately, some of those ways include ones of minimal effort, which this gift follows. This is definitely one of the better gifts in the line, but there are a few improvements it needs.

In the picture, from left to right, is the original Golden Gift texture and the revamped texture we created. The original gift has very odd wrapping paper; it is an almost completely solid yellow texture, with some differences in shading, and it is not metallic in any way. The ribbon of the gift is a silvery color and material, which is fine, though the bottoms of the ribbon are oddly black and it does not match the gift. The biggest flaw with this gift, however, are the awful black outlines that surround every edge of this gift. It makes it seem unrealistic and very sharp. Lastly, this gift emits particles (which is a good idea itself,) but the particles that it emits are the default roblox particle texture, so no effort was put into finding an alternative. We have no suggestion as to what they should be, as long as they aren't the default.

The remade Golden Gift texture can be found here.

The Modern Gift, evidently a painting gift, is a unique and very interesting gift. There are virtually no major flaws with the gift itself so the topic of this will focus on the contents of the gift.

The painting that will come from this gift is... something. The frame (created by Fjalon) is a step to using more unioned frames instead of blocks and is of no issues.

The painting itself, however, is a disappointment. The painting is of only 2 solid-color squares overlapping each other; it is so simplistic that it is hard to describe it as "modern." There are many, many ways that this painting could be fixed, though because modern art is a very wide subject. A painting of some form of complex cubism could be used, or at least anything that doesn't leave literally three quarters of boring white space.

 

~ Written by Trainlover123123, Gift texture revamps by Unikarnz & Jac16king