CoD handling of RGB colours

[BOBC]

Hi,
Thought I would fly RGB mid neutral grey and view in shade to see if CoD preserves colour or if a colour cast is applied.
here is result...image taken from side panel Me109E just aft firewall. Flying straight and level. time 12:00 heading north west over channel. Under cloud with sun blotted out.
and what adjustment I made in Photoshop Colour balance and then Hue sat Lightness to see what CoD had done to it. Basically its gone a bit mauve, needed mostly blue taken out -16 and 3 of cyan and 1 of magenta (each of a possible 100) then lightening by 2

http://i.imgur.com/q5nMcoD.jpg (http://imgur.com/q5nMcoD)

so any RGB that is created accurately on an image prog will have its colour changed it seems.
No doubt each colour created will have its own unique adjustment by CoD just to make life tricky.

Will test to see if these adjustments work for all. watch this space.

Having adjusted though an rlm colour and flown it again it wanted further adjustment so CoD doesnt sing the same song it seems ! How many verses it has remains to be seen.
Maybe different vid cards will have different results as well.

BOBC

Nvidia GTX970 win7 64bit pro. Eizo CG247W calibrated monitor. Photoshop CS6

[major_setback]

Colours work differently on each aircraft.
I would wait with doing too much work on colours, as they have changed in every patch until now. Mess around with them and have fun though, but I wouldn't make colour charts for each aircraft yet.
Cheers, setback

[BOBC]

Keen to see correct colours in my CoD,

I have flown rlm65, but in flight I get something brighter than the original target colour, more like light cyan than dull grey blue.

I have posted elsewhere forgetting this was the skinning section.

So asking here now, is there a conversion prog or method to get an rgb colour in sim looking like the colour I have in photoshop ?

maybe we feed in the rgb values, poke a button and out pops the rgb value the sim requires to display it.

Nightmare otherwise as whatever accurate colours are created, skins and other effects drawn to look right in photoshop, the sim will screw it all up.

One designs to screen, a calibrated screen, only to find result in sim is different.

Could also do with flying a flat panel, I dont suppose there is a flat panel for test flying colours ? ! Currently using the panel just at of me109e bulkhead.

Using FMB to fly, its a lot of drilling into the sim. flying then exiting back out again ! Any quicker method of viewing how a skin looks ?

BOBC

[Mysticpuma]

BOBC. I would honestly wait until the next patch v4.5 at-least as I understand that (maybe) the shaders will change and this will affect the colour representation. I may of-course be wrong as I am no longer part of Team Fusion but maybe worth holding back for now.

Cheers, MP

[farley]

.......I am no longer part of Team Fusion.......... Cheers, MP

:ind:

Glad you are still here though Mystic!

:thumbsup:

[ATAG_Colander]

I don't think you will ever get a match unless all lightning and atmospheric calculations are removed from the equation.
Then you will end up with this:
http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsvault/images/msfs3-lear-meigs.gif

[BOBC]

How do other sims have skins created, ?

Do they all use the same colour engine as CoD ?

Designers like to design to screen knowing that the finished article appears as such in the sim, else it turns into a nightmare when what you paint comes out different.

If patch 4.5 makes RGB appear in sim as designed in photoshop, then it will consequently make all existing artwork appear different !

Did the Il2 team adopt a different than normal sim colour engine or is it what other flight sims use ?

is there some means of create an rgb mix, feed it into a prog and out pops the rgb mix the sim required for that ?

BOBC

[ATAG_Colander]

I'll explain with a question...

If the skin is RGB(255,255,255) and the light is RGB(255,0,0), do you think you will see the skin as:
a) RGB(255,0,0)
b) RGB(255,255,255)


Another one...

If the skin is RGB(255,255,255) and the light is RGB(0,0,0), do you think you will see the skin as:
a) RGB(0,0,0)
b) RGB(255,255,255)

[varrattu]

Keen to see correct colours in my CoD,

... is there a conversion prog or method to get an rgb colour in sim looking like the colour I have in photoshop ?

BOBC

I remember an application named <<Color Sustainer>>. As a kind of ICC Profile Enforcer <<Color Sustainer>> allows you to associate color profiles with particular display modes.

Download: http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/color_sustainer_download.html

:salute: ~V~

Edit 22.06.2017: Different rendering systems handle colours in different ways and to different extents. No doubt, physically based rendering (PBR) is needed to have things looking real. But there is much more to say on this more technical topic ...

[BOBC]

here is a skin of RLM65 as it appears in the 3D viewer, pretty much as designed, happy with that, then in the flight itself.
extract of 3D view flipped horiz and placed next to flight a/c and skin sampled and placed onto flight a/c, massive difference.

gone much lighter brighter etc.

large panel is the target colour, matches the 3D view but not the main flight skin. some of the test strips are near, yet in photoshop they are just dull grey, v little blue. look awful.
so designing something on screen then flying it is not feasible in the normal way.

BOBC28908

BOBC

[BOO]

Use the quick mission builder and place the aircraft - there you can set the rime of day and weather.

[varrattu]

I use the iL2CoD RLM colors.

:salute: ~V~

https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=28912&d=1498393162

[BOBC]

Hi,
Boo, I am flying these skins in the Full Mission Builder. A long way in and a long way out each time to test fly then get results into photoshop !
That 3D viewer is also available in there.
Flying north west at midday clear skies.
assessing colours on side of Me109E just aft firewall


I use the iL2CoD RLM colors.

:salute: ~V~

https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=28912&d=1498393162

Having seen incorrect rlm65 and rlm70 and 71 I am keen to get these as per how they should look.
have photographed Merrick 1938 chart from his 2008 Vols 1 and 2, in sun as well as cloudy bright, in a correct manner, correct exposure, lot of effort has gone into capturing digitally the colours. (many photographs ensuring light levels same at end and start of a shoot sequence, and other technical references, shooting midday for 6500k light temperature etc. )

Now to fly them.

That IL2 chart, is that showing in the squares the final colour in flight or what the skin will look like ?

i.e. is that somebodys idea of what the colours should be in flight or is it saying pick these and you will get Merrick in flight ?

It has sliders but the jpg I get they are inactive.

BOBC

[varrattu]

The German paints were produced by different paint producers in occupied territory. The aircrafts from production line were delivered in standardized camouflage which was modified at front line. Paints reacted to differently weather and high altitude radiation. To make the confusion perfect, we have to know that in the last months of war every bottle of old and new colour was used and had been mixed.

On the basis of photography it is nearly impossible to identify for variant shade of grey with certainty (i.e. RLM 65 and RLM 65 A). Another aspect is the scale effect. A small / scaled object looks always darker than the bigger one.

:salute: ~V~

[BOO]

One of things that keeps getting missed is Setbacks (who id consider to be the expert on clod and its handling of colours) point that each aircraft model handles colours differently.

This would lead me to assume that's is less about a standardised set of RGB numbers and more about feel and interpretation whilst using references like the colour charts shown plus colour samples from other skins and a good dollop your own thinking on the RL application to render a result that pleases you.

I do think scale effect has a big influence but how it transfers from scale models to virtual 3D worlds I'm less certain about. Certainly the established colour references (Merricks etc) would look too heavy on a scale model. I used to use Merrick et al as a starting point and reference but after that, its freeform.

TBH I now tend to look more at the work of experienced and skilled model makers (like the Hellenic guys) than squares of colour in a book. In my experience such people have been though the pain of years of having their work scrutinised and judged by some seriously knowledgeable and picky people who have been arguing about colour a lot longer than PCs have been around so if it passes that muster.....

[BOBC]

Hi Varrattu,

That IL2 chart, is that showing in the squares the final colour in flight or what the skin will look like ?

Do I select a square, then use the rgb value the sliders show to paint my skin, or is that chart saying after fiddling about, this is the colour one should see in CoD.

I would hope its the colours we set up in photoshop.

Where does one get this chart from with working sliders ?

Boo, I quite agree, scale effect etc, but one must tread carefully and achieve the same relationship between the colours. Some modellers just grab a range of Luft paint such as MIG and dont bother to see how the colours relate to each other, assume MIG have got it right, then end up with rlm70/71 looking like rlm02/71. painting out different brands of Luft paints sees some massive differences in relationships. 70/71 are not that much different, but one would not believe that looking at model paint ranges. Its a question of getting a real feel for the subject, painting out colours that match Merrick, then getting that relationship and colour as it would look on the aircraft in use and in sunlight,. Dictated to by the sim that has a mind of its own and doesnt play ball well with rgb expectations.

BOBC

[varrattu]

Here is my template for iL2CoD

https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=29315&d=1500051209

29315

[varrattu]

And how it looks

https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=29316&d=1500051895

29316

[BOBC]

Hi,

where does one download the CoD RLM chart from ?

That rlm65 by the way looks almost white, I have what seems to be a fair representation of Merricks 1938 RLM65 at the moment.

I am struggling to get RLM71 without it going a brown more than a green, I have one rlm70/71 pairing thats sort of ok and near to correct, though the rlm70 needs a tad more olive to it, so I am trying to better it.

Subtle single figure changes to the rgb values see a sudden wrong shade occurr to a colour. Very difficult to make subtle colour changes. Whu IL2 went for this crazy wild colour management system I dont know.

Cheers

BOBC

[BOO]

That rlm65 by the way looks almost white, I have what seems to be a fair representation of Merricks 1938 RLM65 at the moment.



Looks fine to me Varrattu - thanks for putting it up.