Dithering
noun
- The process of representing intermediate colours by patterns of tiny coloured dots that simulate the desired colour.
This topic will cover two ways to use the ColorCorrection effect in order to add a dithering filter to your renders.
Approach 1 - Simple 1:2
The most straightforward and reliable way to dither your scene, it only makes use of three values: ColorCorrection.Brightness, ColorCorrection.Contrast and Lighting.ExposureCompensation.
Start by cranking up the Contrast value to any even number beyond 2,000 (roughly the minimum value for dithering to be visible at), set Brightness to half of the Contrast’s value and finally, try to find which negative number ExposureCompensation requires to achieve the desired result through trial&error.
Approach 2 - Extreme Dimming
A more complex and stylised way to dither your scene, it makes use of most value available.
Begin by dimming the lighting of your world by lowering its Lighting.Brightness, Diffuse and Specular to the thousandth or ten-thousandth, compress the colours at your disposition by setting the Ambient, OutdoorAmbient and TintColor values to a number below 0C0C0C (12, 12, 12) and finally, bring them out by increasing the Brightness and Contrast of the ColorCorrection effect at the same ratio of 1:2 before lowering ColorCorrection.Brightness until it looks like you want it to.
Make sure to not have any SunRays, Blur, or Atmosphere/Fog effects of enabled when tweaking these values.
Results
Stylised1
Stylised2
As these two are a bit complicated, here’s a folder containing the both of them instead:
Dithering_Examples.rbxm (4.6 KB)
Additional Effects
Additional Effects
While I’ve covered the two ways to dither one’s scene, there are also ways to modify it further with the addition of other effects.
Fog/Atmosphere
Simply said, both Fog and Atmosphere amplify the dithering by changing the colour value of parts based on their distance from the camera. In function, this gives your camera a dithering pattern that moves alongside it.
Make your choice carefully as the difference between Fog and Atmosphere (aside from their controlling values) is that one is a flat colour and the other reflects your skybox (haze being capable of overwriting it), brightening your scene in the process.
Blur&DepthOfField
Blur&DepthOfField both increase the size of your dithered chunks, or something the likes.
I’m not too sure whether or not they occur before or after the ColorCorrection, but give them a try for more stylisation.
Depth of Field can also be used in certainly wacky ways.
Notes:
- Roblox studio’s properties tab cannot visualise values below 0.001, even if they usually remain functional. Don’t be afraid to go in the ten thousandth or even hundred thousandth, even more so if you bother noting down these values somewhere.
- Ambient, OutdoorAmbient, FogColor/AtmosphereColor, TintColor and Saturation can all be used to limit the amount of colours at your disposition. Even a single value shift—whether saturated or not—will have an impact on your environment.
- Chat bubbles will be made disfunctional influenced by this effect, change their colour to fix them.
- High contrast allows for flat texture to look as though as they have a normal map.
That was all there was to explain about this bizarre application of the ColorCorrection effect… I think. Do tell me if I’ve missed anything or made any mistake as I’ll be updating this post with all information relating to it.
This is the second iteration of this guide and by proxy, my second publication on this forum despite it being the very same post. Hopefully it’s better now, but either way, have a nice day!
(psst, you can also check out a live example of stylised dithering here)
thanks for this @YRNI0~!