Question about False Color in Render Properties

Question

Following Blender Guru's Donut Tutorials and currently at the end of Part 1.

I'm really unsure about the false color concepts, grey is the ideal color so we have to tweak all the settings till its mostly grey?? Based on what I have read, this works like a heat map; so red and dark blue should be avoided at all cost??

Using cycles with basic settings.

The use of filmic blender is clearly explained by its author here: https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/ read also: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/46825/render-with-a-wider-dynamic-range-in-cycles-to-produce-photorealistic-looking-im — susu, Sep 27 '20 at 17:21
read also: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/175103/make-texture-visible-in-sunlight/175110#175110 — susu, Sep 27 '20 at 17:25
Short answer from photography: You just use the gray as a guideline to quickly get a base exposure. Just like a physical gray card in real life. After that you do whatever you want because you're a boss artist. (But it's good not to clip values as a matter of convenience for your future self in post/compositing.) — SO_fix_the_vote_sorting_bug, Jun 23 '22 at 12:22

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 27 '20 at 17:29

10

Generally, just try to avoid pure White and pure Black areas

White represents High end clipping - you lose details for anything brighter
Black represents Low End clipping - you lose details for anything darker

Three things to remember:

You can always increase clipping later, but you can't recover clipped details from exported JPG/TIFF/PNG
Keep as much details for editing and only clip colors in your final photo
You can have as much clipping in your final photo as you want, there's no right or wrong

How to correct an overexposed photo (with pure white areas)

Here's a detailed chart of the values for the coloring for the false color:

Source: https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/

edited Sep 27 '20 at 17:29

susu

14,002
3
25
48

answered Sep 27 '20 at 11:34

jachym michal

31,744
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115

worth reading also: Using the False Color look in combination with the CDL Node to work on Wide Dynamic Range scenes – susu Sep 27 '20 at 17:35
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@JacymMichal. Instead of altering exposure for the scene, it would be advisable to modify the light sources' levels to accomodate the desired values. Or in the case of HDR used as environment lighting, modify the brightness there. – susu Sep 27 '20 at 19:20
1

Oh sure, It's just to show one approach while keeping the answer as simple as possible :). – jachym michal Sep 27 '20 at 19:23
"You can always increase clipping later, but you can't recover clipped details"— Technically the tradeoff is that you lose dynamic range detail, which you also can't recover, and can actually get pretty significant with 8-bit formats (thought not nearly as visually jarring as clipping, no). – Will Chen Oct 13 '22 at 07:34
@WillChen That's a better explanation, thanks :) – jachym michal Oct 15 '22 at 08:03

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 27 '20 at 10:25

0

wherever there is red color in this heat map , there is so light getting reflected that the exposure is making it almost impossible to see , and blue is so underexposed that it looses its detailed and is totally dark.

answered Sep 27 '20 at 10:25

SHikha Mittal

1,035
8
21

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I'm sorry this answer is incorrect. read https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/ and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/46825/render-with-a-wider-dynamic-range-in-cycles-to-produce-photorealistic-looking-im – susu Sep 27 '20 at 17:24
sry , might have got that wrong – SHikha Mittal Sep 27 '20 at 17:30

Question about False Color in Render Properties

2 Answers2