Color Swap with Hue Variation Preservation
This shader will convert a color to another with a margin of tolerance while trying to account for the slights variations in hue and saturations artists use when adding shades/highlights.
See the screenshot for a comparison on how it looks compared to tinting the values.
The way it works is pretty similar to HSV Adjustment in Krita or Photoshop, except you just indicate what final color you want instead of fiddling with the hsv sliders.
Shader code
// https://godotshaders.com/shader/color-swap-with-hue-variation-preservation
shader_type canvas_item;
// How to use:
// 1) Store the initial color in `from`
// 2) Store the target color in `to`
// 3) Adjust tolerance to grab a range of hues or set to 0 for exact match
uniform vec4 from : source_color;
uniform vec4 to : source_color;
uniform float tolerance: hint_range(0.0, 1.0);
// Color space conversion from https://godotshaders.com/shader/color-range-swap/
vec3 rgb2hsv(vec3 c)
{
vec4 K = vec4(0.0, -1.0 / 3.0, 2.0 / 3.0, -1.0);
vec4 p = mix(vec4(c.bg, K.wz), vec4(c.gb, K.xy), step(c.b, c.g));
vec4 q = mix(vec4(p.xyw, c.r), vec4(c.r, p.yzx), step(p.x, c.r));
float d = q.x - min(q.w, q.y);
float e = 1.0e-10;
return vec3(abs(q.z + (q.w - q.y) / (6.0 * d + e)), d / (q.x + e), q.x);
}
// All components are in the range [0…1], including hue.
vec3 hsv2rgb(vec3 c)
{
vec4 K = vec4(1.0, 2.0 / 3.0, 1.0 / 3.0, 3.0);
vec3 p = abs(fract(c.xxx + K.xyz) * 6.0 - K.www);
return c.z * mix(K.xxx, clamp(p - K.xxx, 0.0, 1.0), c.y);
}
void fragment()
{
// we usually want more granularity the closer we are to the original color
float _tol = tolerance * tolerance;
vec4 tex = texture(TEXTURE, UV);
vec3 source_hsv = rgb2hsv(tex.rgb);
vec3 initial_hsv = rgb2hsv(from.rgb);
vec3 hsv_shift = rgb2hsv(to.rgb) - initial_hsv;
float hue = initial_hsv.r;
// the .r here represents HUE, .g is SATURATION, .b is LUMINANCE
if (hue - source_hsv.r >= -_tol && hue - source_hsv.r <= +_tol)
{
vec3 final_hsv = source_hsv + hsv_shift;
tex.rgb = hsv2rgb(final_hsv);
}
COLOR = tex;
}


For Godot 4, use this code.
Great work! Thank you for posting this. I used it for my character customization screen (hair, beard, shirt, pants, shoe color), and it works like a charm. I tried to automate it a little bit by setting the “from” color to the most used color in the current sprite and the “to” color to a color picker control node.
I’ll leave these functions here maybe they’ll be of some use to someone.
#sometimes the most used color is my "baked into sprite" black outline and I want to ignore that. hence ignore_color static func extract_most_used_color(texture: Texture2D, ignore_color: Color) -> Color: # Get the image from the texture var image: Image = texture.get_image() # Dictionary to store color counts var color_count: Dictionary= {} # Iterate through each pixel for y in range(image.get_height()): for x in range(image.get_width()): var color: Color = image.get_pixel(x, y) if color.a == 0: # Ignore fully transparent pixels continue if color == ignore_color: # Ignore the specific color continue if color_count.has(color): color_count[color] += 1 else: color_count[color] = 1 # Find the most used color var most_used_color: Color = Color() var max_count: int = 0 for color:Color in color_count.keys(): if color_count[color] > max_count: max_count = color_count[color] most_used_color = color return most_used_colorThe I use this function like
#Called in the chain of color_changed signal of Colorpicker func update_part_color(value:Color,part:String) -> void: #Set colorpicked Color for persistant savegame feature Globals.clothingcolors[part+"Color"] = value #for profile picture and character customization dummycharacter for dude in get_tree().get_nodes_in_group("menududes"): #If bodypart has the shader if dude.get_node(part).material: var most_used_color:Color = extract_most_used_color(dude.get_node(part).texture, Color("#0e071b")) #Set shader params from and to dude.get_node(part).material.set("shader_parameter/from", most_used_color) dude.get_node(part).material.set("shader_parameter/to", Globals.clothingcolors[part+"Color"])