Color workflow

[JuhaHo]

What would be the correct way to find out diffuse colors? I have tested a color reader, but it's not reliable. Now I'm trying color fans and started with NCS. Having 2 050 colors, it's somewhat limited. I wonder if RAL Design System Plus would give more to choose from.

Are there any other physical color samples to choose from?

[suzanne_doherty]

Colour workflow is one of those parts of CGI that make me wanna jump off a bridge!

[fixeighted]

Yes, I prefer when a client (actually happened) requests the render on a house be the colour of a soft cloud...only took a day to establish exactly wtf that was

[Vizioen]

Yeah problem with these color charts and everything is, that clients don't realise that there's something like reflections etc that influences colors.

You can do all the tricks in the books to try and get the color as close as possible to the values that are provided, being it NCS or whatever. You still need to take into account, lighing, reflections and other things that change the look af the material.

I just wing it and then change it a little in post, never had an issue with my clients.

[sirio76]

To get a good starting point you will need to linearize the color, but then during the rendering all kind of thing will happen (reflection, light color, GI color bleed etc) realistically the color will be very different from the color chart, like in real life.
Clients often won’t understand that so your best bet is to eyeball the color of the material, then perform specific correction on the VFB to match the original color.

[glorybound]

I once had a couch delivered. They delivered a black couch and I purchased a gray couch. I was livid, went back the store with a cushion from the black couch, to look at the floor model, and sure enough, it was black.

[JuhaHo]

I quickly created this scene to demonstrate one key step - the white balance. I used VRay Override material with neutral grey RGB 57,57,57 In Photoshop 128,128,128. I took samples of three visible sides of the cube and got total RGB values for all sides is 171,169,171 /3=57.

[JuhaHo]

So I did a little test. took VRay paint template and replaced the diffuse color with commonly used RAL 5015 Himmelblau., by using Vray color picker with attached sample having RGB value 0,124,176. Again I calculated average of three sides of the cube and got 37,126,175. I think we are quite near here since it's not easy to render 0 for red with reflective material and HDR-lightning.