Colors Brighter Than Expected

Started by bcgreen24, October 22, 2019, 07:57:10 PM

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bcgreen24

When I set up a base shader using a VERY dark brown and a lighter brown (but still pretty dark), my terrain ends up looking yellowish-orange.  Same for adding a surface layer for grass-- I use a SUPER dark green (practically looks black), but the color comes out looking like neon green.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

D.A. Bentley (SuddenPlanet)

If you attach your tgd scene file here people will generally will help you pretty quick.

-Derek

WAS

Generally colours tend to get much brighter in sunlight because of the highlighting. For example, a good "Grass" green would be a green tone at 0.2-0.3

bcgreen24

OK, so: the brown in this quick test doesn't look as bad as usual-- but, still, comparing the colors in the 'color' tab of '/Base colors' to what is rendered (and also looking at the brown peeking through the 'broken up' green for the grass, you can see the difference).  And the 'grass'-- well that green is way lighter than the color in the '/Grass' node. 

https://imgur.com/a/ni6B2Lz


Thanks!
Bryan

bcgreen24

Now all that being said...I can get the green color I want by jacking the brightness slider for the color way, way down to where it looks almost black.  So: I'm thinking that the lighting is to blame, as WAS mentioned?

Bryan

Matt

#5
The default scene has a sunlight intensity of 5, which means surfaces will appear anywhere up to 5 times as bright as they are in the colour picker when they are facing directly towards the sun. You can reduce this (or reduce the camera exposure), but this can lead to knock-on effects where it's harder to create photorealistic results. For example, with a darker sun or a darker exposure you'll find that the sky is darker, and you can brighten up the atmosphere to compensate but it will affect the lighting in unrealistic ways. You'll also start to create surface colours that are brighter than they should be in terms of real-world measurements, and this can make it difficult to get realistic contrast in your textures. In reality, green grass should be quite dark on the 0..1 scale (usually no more than 0.25) even though it might appear brighter in photographs due to the lighting and exposure.

Having said that, it might still be useful to reduce the sunlight intensity a bit so that you can get results closer to what you expect.
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

bcgreen24

Quote from: Matt on October 23, 2019, 10:19:40 PMThe default scene has a sunlight intensity of 5, which means surfaces will appear anywhere up to 5 times as bright as they are in the colour picker when they are facing directly towards the sun. You can reduce this (or reduce the camera exposure), but this can lead to knock-on effects where it's harder to create photorealistic results. For example, with a darker sun or a darker exposure you'll find that the sky is darker, and you can brighten up the atmosphere to compensate but it will affect the lighting in unrealistic ways. You'll also start to create surface colours that are brighter than they should be in terms of real-world measurements. In reality, grass should be quite dark on the 0..1 scale (usually no more than 0.25) even though it might appear brighter in photographs due to the lighting and exposure.

Having said that, it might still be useful to reduce the sunlight intensity a bit so that you can get results closer to what you expect.
Makes sense--- thanks for the info!

Bryan

D.A. Bentley (SuddenPlanet)

I noticed your saturation for your grass was 100, and your brown base color was over 90.  For realism you probably want to reduce your saturation to between 30 - 40.

-Derek

Dune

Better still, have the PF followed by a (blue node) adjust saturation and have another PF make some variation. And while, you're at it, have that followed by a (blue node) multiply color, and use yet another PF do get even more variation.