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Author Topic: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object  (Read 3057 times)

BH1040

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Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« on: December 19, 2013, 08:22:46 AM »
Hopefully not TOO newbie.

After successfully creating  grass to composite into a video clip, I'm finding the grass has too much chroma.  I'd like to desaturate the Forest model within Max and view it as a layer over a video plate background.

I tried the tint function within the Forest/Modify panel, but without success.  I looked at the individual materials for the forest and there are too many maps to manipulate easily.

Also my exposure is set properly for all the other objects in the scene.

Is there an easy solution within FPP to de-saturate a forest object?

Thanks for reading and replying.

Cheers,

Paul


iToo

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #1 on: December 19, 2013, 09:42:04 AM »
No, there is not a procedure to desaturate colors globally. Each material must be adjusted individually.

Anyway, depending of the model, most of the materials are instanced so should not be difficult to modify them. For example, "Common grass" uses a single multi-sub (_fp_grass) with two materials: _fp_grass-a and _fp_grass-b. You would use the following procedure:

1) Drag "_fp_grass" multi-sub from Geometry->Material to the Material Editor.
2) Select "_fp_grass-a" and turn off "Back material" in VRay2SidedMtl (to remove the effect of the back texture).
3) Go to the "Forest Color" level in "grass_front".
4) Set Tint->Blending mode to "Normal". Adjust the tint slot colors, lowering their saturation, and increase "Random Strength" if necessary (i.e. to 100%).
5) Repeat for "_fp_grass-b".

I hope that helps.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

BH1040

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #2 on: December 19, 2013, 07:43:40 PM »
Thanks for the prompt response.  Worked like a charm. :)

Great software and support.

Cheers and Happy Holidays.

Paul


alexrecentspaces

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2014, 10:30:28 AM »
I'd like to put a request in here for the ability to quickly desaturate/saturate all forest materials globally, somehow. Perhaps an override would work? Global Tint, perhaps?
Alex York
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iToo

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2014, 10:49:07 AM »
I'm afraid there is no way to modify all Forest colors globally, since each material may use their own settings. As instance, in some cases it would be necessary to modify the Back materials, but in others not. Forest Color only is a part of the material result.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

alexrecentspaces

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2014, 10:51:36 AM »
Would it not be possible to mix between a shader that desaturates and all current forest materials? Like a Mix override? It's not a show-stopper, since it's easy enough to do in post, but it would save some time, especially for animation work.
Alex York
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iToo

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2014, 04:14:30 PM »
In that case we should include other controls as well: saturation, brightness, contrast, hue, etc... basically we would be duplicating the functionality of the Color Correction texture.
Also, it should be available in the Forest object properties, so it affects globally to all Forest Color instances. Sincerely, i think it's not a practical workflow.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

alexrecentspaces

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2014, 04:19:43 PM »
Shame to hear that. The idea is to provide a 1-stop location to globally affect these values - I'm not sure why it would cause conflicts that aren't resolvable. It's like Vray's override material. The idea being that if you have, say, 50 different Geometries being used in your scene across 1 or more FP objects (which is common in my work) then you'd have to change 50 materials if you want to desaturate everything. Or render a mask/channel and desat in post, which is what I'm currently doing.
Alex York
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BI1654

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #8 on: April 14, 2014, 05:15:56 PM »
Have to say I would love a overall colour correct for the whole forest.
Even if you have 5 objects in your forest, its still a real mission to go through and colour correct every single map.
Cant it be a function of Forest colour map? So you can use forest tools to apply a forest colour map to all objects and then tweak the global forest colour settings from the forest colour object?

iToo

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Re: Howto Globally Tint or Desaturate Forest Object
« Reply #9 on: April 15, 2014, 09:39:04 AM »
I'm not sure if it can be done. But i added your suggestion to the wishlist, we'll make some tests with that.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software