Shadows looks too blueish

[Amerio.Stephane]

Hello,

Our pilots consistently report the shadows (for buildings, trees, etc) to be too blueish. This is with a clear sky scenario.

Is there an easy way to correct that ? (I don't want to lower the ambient, as this leads to too dark shadows)

Thank you.

[silent]

Hi Amerio,

There are couple of ways to adjust the ambient color:

• Bake Voxel probe (even with low resolution) should help a bit
• Tune the ambient scale and try to adjust the exposure of the scene
• Adjust the sky LUT texture in Photoshop or similar tool (reduce the blue component). We've recently changed sky LUT texture to match with offline rendering (colors and other stuff is almost identical to real raytracing), so I don't think that it's the preferable way.

Thanks!

[Amerio.Stephane]

I think I find a workaround by playing with the Ambient and the filmic effect values.

Suggestion #1: add a "revert to default value" near the sliders in the settings, I miss that very much !

Suggestion #2: add some "presets" for the filmic effects, I'm sure you have a few settings to impress us :)

[silent]

Amerio,

Thank you for the suggestions, added both of them to the features list.

[Amerio.Stephane]

Hello,

Sorry to unearth this topic, but the blue tint of shadows is becoming a real concern here (I get the remark every day).

With a clear sky, I get around it by lowering the ambient value and tweaking the exposition/filmic effect. But this leads to very dark shadows. This is acceptable in a very sunny environment because of the contrast in the real world. But when adding e few clouds and their shadows, this no longer works because the world becomes all dark.

I also tried with a voxel probe, I get similar results. When I switch to Preset#2, then I get the correct tint, but of course everything is greyish (so I can only use it with an overcast sky).

Exactly which file is used to control shadows tint? Can you share the reference material you used to tune the shadows tint for outdoor envioronment ?

Thanks

[silent]

Hi Amerio,

You can modify sky LUT as you want (we've created it that way so it almost match the offline renderers) (base.tga).

Additional color correction can be done also via LUT texture after the final image (just create a screenshot with a blueish shadows and tune up in photoshop).

Thanks!

[Amerio.Stephane]

Modifying the LUT is not a viable solution because it changes the sky color, not just the ambient illumination.

Applying a global color correction is not good either, because it changes the global aspect. I would have appreciated to be able to apply a correction to the ambient color value itself.

[silent]

Amerio,

Could you please send us a small example of your current worlds that you are using with render settings? If there will be couple of camera locations where you see the blueish shadows - it will be perfect.

Thanks!

[Amerio.Stephane]

Here is a snapshot with your BE200 in the front. The shadow is strongly tinted (values taken with Photoshop 31x31 sampler)

This is with environment preset #0, sun, shadows, everything set to their default value. This is also clearly visible with the default "material ball and ground" scene. I understand this results from the sky LUT shining at objects and "tinting" them, but it really feels like this is way too much. Maybe there should be a LUT for the sky itself and another for the ambient? After all, during the day, all shadows feel neutral, but at sunset the shadows do feel *slightly* tinted blue while the direct sunlight feels more orange.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Amerio.Stephane

[silent]

Hi Amerio,

We've raised a priority of that task (too blueish shadows) in our bug tracker. We would think how to get rid out of it by slightly changing the lightning algorithm.

At this moment the best way (fastest and easiest) will be to adjust (desaturate for example) blue color in Base LUT texture (base.tga).

Thanks!