CGTalk - Controlling Colors

brueghel

11-18-2010, 03:34 PM

I have a question regarding colors in 3D renders.

What is the best workflow and pipeline from the initial Color idea & sketch to the final render?

Im not very deep in rendering and compositing and its always the same: I have an idea how the final image should look based on concept art and illustrations. Then I begin to model, assign textures, create some "awesome shading networks", add some "cool" lighting effects, adjust render settings and so on, after rendering I tweak the colors so that it looks good. But its not "controlling the colors", and Im getting far and farer away from the initial concept art.

Even if assign an image to a surface shader with no lighting included and render it, the colors are not the same as I painted them in Photoshop.

I have a strong background in Painting, I wish I could translate the look and feel 2D Image, with all the colors, subtle brush strokes, specular highlights, textures,.....directly into a 3D Image.

I hope you understand my problem, Im goingt to make a shortfilm, and I want to have a special look, it should rather look like a painting and not cgi.Which cues should I know and which books should I read?

Thanks

musashidan

11-18-2010, 09:15 PM

Could be a Gamma issue. Are you using a LWF? What app?

playmesumch00ns

11-19-2010, 12:39 PM

Since none of us here are mind-readers, some images would really help :)

brueghel

11-19-2010, 10:46 PM

Alright, I heard about linear workflow, but Im not very familiar with it. I know there are gamma correction nodes in maya, you can connect the file outputs to them.I think its fine to use this nodes for gamma corrected photos to give maya linear data so maya calculates physically accurate images (menatl ray) accordingly what you would expext. But Im not sure how to handle with this, since I look for a non-photorealistic style, and I paint most of my textures and matte paintings in photoshop myself.

Hm, I hope my questions are not too confusing. But here is a nice example from a sequence of the animation feature "Desperaux". It looks almost like a 2D Illustration, but its motion picture. I find it very hard to controll aspects of an 3D image like specular highligts, shadows, lights so that it looks like 2D painting.

http://img210.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap37492.png/
http://img502.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap35202.png/
http://img708.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap36923.png/
http://img708.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap36923.png/
http://img502.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap35202.png/
http://img210.imageshack.us/i/vlcsnap37492.png/

playmesumch00ns

11-20-2010, 06:00 PM

You should always use a linear workflow regardless of what style you're aiming for. Without it your lighting will be artificially contrasty, and that will not help achieve the sort of look you're after.

The images you linked to show a very flat lighting style, using quite a uniform environment light (either IBL or ambient-occluion-based, I'd guess the latter), with a soft rim.

Do you have examples of images you've made so far so we can try and direct you?

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