Any tips for rendering to exact colors of swatches?

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max General
1

Hey,

I am wondering if anyone has rendered a scene with exact color swatch color matching for a client and if there are any tips you can share?

My client is looking for me to render an autocad model with exact match to their Benjamin Moore swatches to see what the buildings will look like when they are painted.

Thanks!

2

3Ddesign - Posted a tutorial on using LWF to get true color reproduction here http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15253&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

As far as getting the paint colors go to Compare | EasyRGB and you can get the rgb values, Even without lwf you should be able to get it close enough with a little post in PS.

3

Exact compared to… what?

Color is all about perception. What colors are near it, the color of the light source, whether you are looking at ambient, specular, shadow, direct, or reflected light, the physical properties of the material that color is applied to… these all affect how a color looks.

I know this doesn’t help you in your quest - I run into the same thing all the time! Send these links to your clients and see if it helps. :wink:

Link 1
Link 2

Check this out:

770×120 1.43 KB

Both ends are actually the same color. :shock:

Or this…

540×420 12.2 KB

So, in the end, it’s not about it being “right” - it’s about pleasing the client, which quite often isn’t “right”.

That said, I find if I pick an RGB off my screen, then punch the values into a ColorCorrect map with 2.2 gamma applied, it comes *awful* close.

4

Heh, I 've had clients want it without any shadows or shading so that the whole thing was “right” :o :lol:

5

speaking of color… just saw this one.

6

haha thats a great illusion :smile:

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u are so right! it s a hard time explain that to clients… :cry:
8)

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If you want to be able to tell your clients that you are using the real RGB’s for whichever paint color they select, go to www.easyrgb.com which has most of the brand name paints in there. Then once I get into Photoshop I create a swatch with those rgb colors and compare it to a median point in my rendering that I am trying to match the color to. I would often send my client a final review of the rendering, along with little squares of the colors that they had specified, so they could see that, in fact, even if the color perception was different, I was using the actual colors.

Then once you get the colors fairly close, then it is all up to the printing.

9

Re: Any tips for rendering to exact colors of swatches?

Are these interior or exterior images? What is your final output? Do you have access to the building site?

Craig

10

Thanks for the replies guys! They contain great information.

Are these interior or exterior images? What is your final output? Do you have access to the building site?

These will be exterior images. The final output will be printed to a brochure. I do have access to the building site.

11

Just as a forewarning: after much hassle with our Gretag Macbeth eye-one, I have come to the conclusion that the swatches have some sort of anti-colorometer coating to protect their colors from being directly matched from the swatch. I actually didn’t figure it out with the eye-one, but with a simple color copier :lol:

We are going to start getting actual painted samples with the color on them to scan with our eye-one.

12

Re: Any tips for rendering to exact colors of swatches?

One surefire method to get correct color is to prime and paint a 4 x 8 piece of cardboard or plywood with the selected color and photograph it at the site. Use the photo of the site as your Max background and render your building to match the color of the plywood in the background. If this is a method you want to try, I can elaborate.

Craig