Value and Contrast

 

Color and Contrast

This week I learned about value and contrast.  As someone who is still learning Photoshop I was both excited and intimidated about the project.  To start my project I went to look for references and ideas for the look I was going for.  After restarting my project multiple times I had the idea of having colors similar to the colors used on the vehicles from Tron.  From there I thought about other references that has neon colors and then I thought about the colors used in the KDA League of Legends music video and my idea grew from there. 

Reference and Inspiration

To start my project, I had several renders from Maya with the vehicle and the mannequins that all had different data on them such as the line work and normal maps.

Scene with Line Work

I first brought my normal map into Photoshop and then looked at the red, green, and blue channels.  I made a copy of each of these channels and worked heavily on the green channel.  I copied the green channel and created a solid color layer to create color in the environment, vehicle, and mannequins.  Overall I had three of these layers in my file which were the main source of color on the objects. Two of these were to create a color on top and the last one selects the inverse to get the color on the bottom.

 

Photoshop Layers

From here I started to create groups for all of my different renders and groups to hold all of my different colors for individual pieces. 

Creating Groups in Photoshop for my layers

Then I imported my ID render and had it as my top layer.  I would use my magic wand tool and turn down the tolerance to 1 and turn off contiguous.  This allowed me to select individual pieces of the vehicle and mannequins so I could change the color individually.  I did this for pieces such as the wheels and windows on the vehicle.  I did a similar process for the pieces that have some gradient on it.  Instead of having it be a solid color layer there would also be a gradient layer that is above it to create the gradient.  This is an example of a few of my individual colors and gradients.  I also added the Ambient Occlusion layer which had a big effect on all of my colors.

Creating Gradients

Determining the colors for this project was really hard because many of the colors would compete against one another or the color combination did not compliment each other the way I was looking for them to.  A big part of getting the colors compliment one another was getting the background colors to pop out the colors used on the vehicle and mannequins. To start I put a black background and I thought about what needed to be on the outside of the vehicle to make it pop.  I got my idea of paint splatters after looking at some photos of the KDA video and began making my paint splatters.  Right around the edges of the vehicle I used the opacity of 100% but as I got further away I brought the opacity down to 30%.  I chose to use the colors cyan, pink and orange.  I then created fog using the Z depth render and made that into a light cyan color to create my background. 

Adding Fog

My last step was to create some small FX.  I used this to create the small glow on the mannequin's helmet, lights on the vehicle, and beam coming from the satellite.  I created a layer and put it on the color dodge mode.  I then used an airbrush and put that too on the color dodge mode and selected a color.  From here I did some painting in the areas that needed some glow. 

Creating Glow on the Mannequins