Displaced Sandstone (renderspeed test @ HQ settings)

[rcallicotte]

Thank God it wasn't just me and you said something.  I have wondered why the colors I chose come out so different in the preview window and in the actual render.  What to do...now..?

I realise that, its just that it seems to play a damn sight bigger part than it did in V0.9 If you used a colour in V0.9 at least it rendered sort of like the colour you chose, In this version most of the time the colours render nothing like the ones you chose and it makes it rather difficult to get what you want.

[Tangled-Universe]

I have the exact same thoughts thought I was the only one suffering from this problem, also because I'm slightly colorblind.
I also experience that the finished previewrender differs quite much in colors compared to the final render.
In overall the colors become a bit fluorescent-like to my opinion.

Don't know where I've read it but someone told here he misses the randomize colors function from TG0.9x. A similar function would be very nice to see in TG2.

But all in all it's just a matter of trial and error and thus lots of exercise...

[mr-miley]

Calico

You don't know how happy it makes me that someone else has the same problems. I thought it was just me too. I realy noticed it when I did my Scafell Pike render http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2734.0 I used a photo of exactly the same view as reference, opened the photo in Photopaint and sampled RGB colour values from the photo to use in TG. I started doing this, and the preview screen top right looked nothing like it should, so I tried it with a quick render, still no better, so I did a few crop full renders and they looked even worse. In the end I had to do it trial and error. Took me twice as long to surface the scene than it should have done   I'm not talking the colours being a "bit off" they were all completely way out, nothing like the colours I chose. Alright, if I chose a mid green, the colour I would end up with would be "A" green, but it would be either a huge amount darker / lighter, and not even in the same tonal range..... And another thing....  
Rant over

Miles

[rcallicotte]

One reason (among many) why I like Art Rage is the ability to create a color palate from another image.  That would be useful.  But, still the palate to final render transition needs to find some happy way to mesh.  And maybe further understanding would help.

[Tangled-Universe]

You mean you can sample colors from an image and the same colors will appear in your render?
Something similar would be great. Depends on whether you can predict how colors will result, is that possible?

[rcallicotte]

Sort of.  In ArtRage, you can sample an image and then that image becomes your palate for using the exact same colors as the image to color your render.  This would mean a modifiable palate, which might be more work for Planetside (more work for Planetside isn't something I prefer, at this point).  If it isn't that difficult, I'd love it.

You mean you can sample colors from an image and the same colors will appear in your render?
Something similar would be great. Depends on whether you can predict how colors will result, is that possible?

[Oshyan]

The chosen colors are represented properly in the render. I would say it's more a matter of not properly accounting for the effects of lighting, atmosphere, etc. The difference between TG 0.9 and TG2 in this regard probably comes down to 3 factors - Global Illumination (not present in TG 0.9 at all), different atmosphere model (an improvement over TG 0.9), and a different tone mapping function (so-called "soft clip", although I believe it is still similar to TG 0.9).

In any case I would not expect drastic differences, nor do I think it is really that much different from TG 0.9. One other factor that may actually play a greater effect than anything is that the *method* of choosing colors is completely different now. The full color palette, as opposed to the little sliders, changes how you will pick colors a lot. The swatches are also larger now I think. Not to mention that it doesn't show a range of exposures as it did in TG 0.9. Enough differences anyway that it could be having a notable effect.

Actually, one thing that just occurred to me is that TG 0.9 had a way to adjust both the render gamma and the GUI gamma. If you adjusted the GUI gamma I believe it affected the surface color previews accordingly. I'm not sure TG2's render gamma has the same effect, or even whether it should, but that might be an additional factor as I know a lot of people turn down the gamma to get a more saturated look.

That being said I do think colors render as they're "supposed to". I too have had trouble picking the exact right colors, but I think that is partly just because we have unrealistic expectations about real-world colors. In the specific case of sampling from a real image you will run into a lot of difficulty because of specific lighting, atmosphere, camera, white balance, and other factors. I don't recall it being all that easy to match colors in TG 0.9 either, nor do I think it is particularly effective in other similar applications.

Still I agree there's room for improvement, it's just that the current systems work well enough and give you all the power you should theoretically need. Anything more would really be a "helper" type of tool. Something to think about for the future...

- Oshyan