Save color palette as resources to reuse later

[nongvantinh]

Close godotengine/godot-proposals#7946

The lack of a palette library slows down development time because swatches contain many colors that may not match the mood an artist is trying to achieve. This can hinder their workflow as they search for the right color within a large set of mostly irrelevant options.

Untitled.video.-.Made.with.Clipchamp.mp4

[AThousandShips]

This should use icons available at runtime, not editor icons, there are some appropriate ones available, and otherwise they should be added, this shouldn't depend on the editor

[fire]

I approve of allowing saving the color pallete from a usability team perspective.

[nongvantinh]

Update:

• Use FileDialog instead of EditorFileDialog.
• Save the palette in the user:// path instead of placing it in the project folder.
• Remove the Palette resource class because it doesn't need anymore.

@AThousandShips What do you mean when you say use icons available at runtime? I couldn't find the correct function to call.

[AThousandShips]

Icons available at runtime are those which aren't editor specific, meant in running projects not running the program itself sorry for confusion

Accidental approval

[nongvantinh]

Sorry for the annoying force push. I wasn't familiar with the TTR part. I need one more favor. I couldn't find the correct icon to use in the function get_theme_icon.

[AThousandShips]

If it isn't in the default theme scene/theme/icons/ then you can add them from the editor or create new ones, and then you need to add them to the default theme, see in scene/theme/default_theme.cpp for details

But I think the normal folder icon is sufficient

Gonna test this one probably tomorrow but code looks good, got some final remarks I'll add when I've tested it out

[Calinou]

I wonder if it should be possible to give a name to each color, and have the name displayed in a tooltip when hovering the color in the ColorPicker's swatch list.

It's common for designers to assign names to colors to make slightly different colors easier to distinguish from each other, or even to refer to them in natural language. If I refer to "lime 800" from Tailwind's color palette, you can immediately know it's #3f6212.

This could be left to a future PR, but we should make sure this feature can be implemented in the future without breaking compatibility (i.e. without changing the data structure in the resource).

[AThousandShips]

Tested and it works as expected, however I don't think the list of resources allowed makes sense, it should probably just limit to res and tres because it currently allows you to save as things like animtex and mesh, which don't make sense

Edit: correction, it shouldn't even be that, it should be some binary format dedicated to this, it doesn't actually store a res or tres file either, so that needs to be fixed

[Calinou]

I suggest using ConfigFile to save palettes as opposed to FileAccess, so you have a text format that is friendly to version control. I'd also give them a custom file extension so they can be targeted more specifically, e.g. cpl.

A similar approach is used for script editor syntax themes, which use a tet file extension.

[Mickeon]

@Calinou Would you like to take a look to see if this PR is satisfactory as is?

[tokengamedev]

Also is it possible to decrease the swatch colors size by 25% at least so more colors can fit in a row

[timshannon]

Also is it possible to decrease the swatch colors size by 25% at least so more colors can fit in a row

That's handled by the editor theme isn't it?

[nongvantinh]

@tokengamedev @timshannon Look at the code: the size is fixed. There is no way to change the size of the preset.

godot/scene/gui/color_picker.cpp

Lines 793 to 797 in 987a844

	inline int ColorPicker::_get_preset_size() {
	return (int(get_minimum_size().width) - (preset_container->get_h_separation() * (PRESET_COLUMN_COUNT - 1))) / PRESET_COLUMN_COUNT;
	}

[Mickeon]

Let's think about that in another PR if necessary.

[nongvantinh]

@Calinou Could you spend some time reviewing my PR again?

[Calinou]

Tested locally, it works as expected.

I noticed a few UI issues though:

• When using Quick Load, the color picker closes, so you can't see your palette being loaded (it still loads correctly when you reopen the color picker). This does not happen when using Load - the color picker stays open as expected.
• The button in the dropdown is Save, but it always displays a file dialog even if a color palette file was already loaded. In this case, it should be renamed to Save As.... A Save button that overwrites the existing loaded palette could also be added above Save As... (this button should be disabled if no palette is loaded).

[nongvantinh]

@Calinou Yes, I noticed the problem with Quick Load when developing this PR. However, I cannot resolve this issue because Godot doesn't support having two exclusive dialogs at the same time in one node. This means the EditorNode already has the ColorPickerPopupPanel as an exclusive child to keep it always visible. When the EditorQuickOpenDialog shows up, it tries to set itself as an exclusive child but fails to do so. Therefore, it prints an error indicating that another dialog is already set as an exclusive child when you try to open Quick Load while the color picker is still open.

As for the Save As option, I will add it when I return home from work.

[nongvantinh]

@Calinou I tried to move the Quick Load dialog to the color picker to avoid the limitation mentioned above. However, I realized that someone had told me I cannot include editor code in the core code, if I remember correctly. As for your first point, I still cannot resolve it, but I have implemented the second point.

Please review it again when you have time.

[Calinou]

@Calinou I tried to move the Quick Load dialog to the color picker to avoid the limitation mentioned above. However, I realized that someone had told me I cannot include editor code in the core code, if I remember correctly. As for your first point, I still cannot resolve it, but I have implemented the second point.

Please review it again when you have time.

Sorry for the delay. I've tested the latest revision of this PR, but I frequently get a freeze when adding some colors to the swatches (even without saving the palette). This occurs both in a standalone ColorPicker and ColorPickerButton.

Testing project: test_color_picker.zip

[nongvantinh]

Could you upload a video showing the issue? I just rebased the code and tested it, but I could not observe the described behavior. Maybe I was just careless and didn't pay enough attention to the details, overlooking something really important.

[Calinou]

I've tested the rebased PR and it works great now. The freezing issue may have been unrelated to this PR and was perhaps due to the state of master back in October.

I took a look at the code and it seems good to me.

[Repiteo]

Thanks!