Want a blood-red Rex, a pure-black Wyvern or a perfectly matched breeding line? ARK: Survival Ascended uses a system of color regions and color IDs to paint every creature, and as an admin you can set any colour you like. This guide explains how regions work, how the ID system works, the exact command to recolour a creature, and how to breed for natural colours.
How color regions work
Every creature in ARK is divided into up to six color regions, numbered 0 to 5. Each region is a different part of the body — for example the main body, a secondary highlight, the belly, the spikes or the wings — and each region is painted by a single color ID. Importantly, not every creature uses every region; some have only two or three active regions, and the rest are unused. The active regions are what give each species its recognisable look.
What a color ID is
Every colour in ARK has a numeric color ID. There are dozens of colours, from natural browns, greens and greys to vivid event colours (the bright reds, purples and neons that appear during seasonal events). To set how a creature looks, you combine a region number with a color ID — region 0 might be the body, and color ID 4 might be a particular red, so together they paint the body red.
The recolour command
With cheats enabled (see our admin commands guide), look at a creature and run:
admincheat SetTargetDinoColor <region> <colorID>For example, SetTargetDinoColor 0 4 paints region 0 with colour 4. To fully customise a creature, run the command once for each active region with the colour you want. To see a creature’s current colours, there’s also a command that prints its region colours to the console, so you can read off exactly what it’s using before you change anything.
Finding naturally coloured creatures
On a normal (non-admin) playthrough you can’t paint creatures — but wild ones spawn with random colours, so striking colour combinations are out there to tame. Many players hunt for a rare-coloured wild creature (a bright Rex, an all-white Argentavis) specifically to tame or breed. During seasonal events, wild creatures can spawn with the special event colours, making event periods the best time to hunt for unusual looks.
Breeding for colours
Colours are heritable. A bred baby inherits region colours from its parents, so by pairing creatures with the colours you want, you can work toward a consistent look across a whole line. On top of that, mutations can roll a brand-new colour in a region — which is how breeders create truly unique, never-seen-in-the-wild colour schemes. See our breeding guide for how mutations work.
Tips for recolouring
- Check the regions first — paint an unused region and nothing happens, so confirm which regions a species actually uses.
- Event colours stand out — the brightest IDs are usually the event colours; use them for show creatures.
- Match a theme — tribe colours across your dino army look great and help identify your tames in a fight.
- Server admins can hand out custom-coloured dinos as event prizes or shop items.
Browse every color ID
Memorising dozens of colour IDs isn’t practical. Use our free ARK Color IDs tool to see every colour with its ID and a live preview, so you can plan the exact look before you run a single command.
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