Ramp Creator

The Ramp Creator is a gradient editor that exports a 1D Texture2D with the correct sampling, filtering, and color space for Genesis. The same tool produces cel-shading ramps, iridescence ramps, stylized-fog gradients, and depth-color ramps — set the use case in the dropdown and the export defaults adjust.

When to use it

Cel shading (Ramp mode) — author the lighting curve directly instead of relying on Single or Stepped.
Iridescence — produce the rainbow shift sampled by view angle.
Stylized Fog — color the fog from ground to horizon.
Depth Coloring — gradient through near-to-far depth.

Opening the tool

Window → Genesis → Ramp Creator. You can also click the author button next to any ramp slot in the Genesis inspector — the Ramp Creator opens with the slot pre-bound.

Screenshot

The Ramp Creator window with the Use Case dropdown, a horizontal gradient bar carrying several draggable color stops, the per-segment curve selector, and the export settings panel showing resolution, color space, filter, and wrap mode.

tools/ramp-creator/ramp-creator-window.png

Workflow

Pick a target use case — Cel, Iridescence, Fog, or Depth. The export resolution, filtering, and color space adjust automatically.
Add color stops along the gradient bar. Drag to move; right-click to set the precise position and color. Holding Alt adds a smooth tangent transition.
Pick a curve for each segment — linear, smoothstep, or eased.
Export. A Texture2D is written to the chosen path with import settings already correct (clamp wrap, bilinear filter, no mipmaps, linear color space for cel).
(Optional) Save the ramp as a .genramp preset — a JSON sidecar that can be re-opened, tweaked, and re-exported later.

Settings

Inspector label	Shader property	Type	Default	Description
Use Case	Use Case	Enum	Cel	Sets export defaults. Cel = 256×4 linear clamp. Iridescence = 512×1 sRGB clamp. Fog = 64×1 linear clamp. Depth = 256×1 linear clamp.
Resolution	Resolution	Int	256	Horizontal pixels. Power of two not required.
Color Space	Color Space	Enum	Linear	Linear for math-driven uses (cel, fog); sRGB for art-driven (iridescence).
Filter Mode	Filter Mode	Enum	Bilinear	Bilinear smooths step edges; Point keeps them razor-sharp.
Wrap Mode	Wrap Mode	Enum	Clamp	Clamp for ramps; Repeat for noise ramps.
Mip Maps	Mip Maps	Bool	false	Off for 1D ramps — saves memory and avoids LOD bleed.

Tips & gotchas

Disable mipmaps and set wrap to Clamp. Unity’s default Texture2D import does neither; the Ramp Creator handles it, but manual ramp textures often forget.
For a Stepped feel with a ramp, drop color stops at sharp thresholds and pick Point filtering. The result matches Stepped but with arbitrary band positions.
Iridescence ramps should be sRGB so the rainbow reads naturally; cel ramps must be linear to avoid double gamma.

Ramps export under 4 KB. They are the cheapest art knob in the Genesis pipeline — use them liberally.