Realistic terrain/ lighting colors

Finding realistic lighting options and terrain colors.

This is a dilemma for many people who want to use terrain and or lighting in a realistic setting, the default presets for the terrian are currently a bit too bright and colorful for most people. And even then, with lighting its free range for you, and its really hard to find something real and fitting for a game, although I do know that lighting in your game can be based off what type of environment you build in but finding the right RGB colors is hard if you don’t have anything to base it on.

Colors like these:

Screenshot by Lightshot
Screenshot by Lightshot
Screenshot by Lightshot
https://gyazo.com/7160e130abde77c40e5566c25af28082

Pictures from State of Anarchy

Please post any suggestions you have on this particular subject if you have any expertise or knowledge on it.

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The easiest way to find realistic terrain/lighting colors is to look at real life. Use the color picker tool in an image editing program to find the color of grass/trees/etc in a real picture, and then set the colors of your terrain / clutter to that. (You will need to fudge around with the colors a bit since terrain materials have built-in color).

For lighting, if you can find a timelapse video of a place in real life, you can compare how the colors of the scene change as time goes on and adapt the Ambient/Brightness/etc in your game to mirror that.

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But what about color correction and contrast and stuff like that?

There’s no single right way to set up lighting / terrain colors, so it’s a balancing act between what you configure Lighting/post processing effects to do. Post processing effects affect areas not exposed to the sun as well though, so you may be better off just using Ambient/OutdoorAmbient for lighting colors.

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Alright, you’ve been a big help, thanks.

Another tip I found is that you can sometimes get away with drastically recoloring certain materials to get an enhanced range of texture into your color pallete. Some work better than others.

For example, sand can become a form of stone if you recolor it to be. Your imagination is the limit.

There is no science to it, you just have to experiment until you get the perfect atmosphere!