Who uses colour tinting with regions?

[eVOLVE]

Okay, here's a weird question... one that won't come as a surprise if you've read the topic:

Who here is using colour tinting with regions? And if you don't mind me asking, what for?

I'm inquisitive because the feature I 'would' have used it for is no longer viable because of the way it works, and although I don't want to use it for the sake of it, maybe someone elses use would inspire me into making my game better using it

Cheers...

[scotch]

I don't, and because of the same thing you said.. it doesn't work quite the way I'd like.  CJ asked me how I'd prefer it to work at mittens, I wasn't sure of the exact method but I'd like it to be able to tint the existing colours rather than do what would be called colorising in PSP or PS which I think is what it does now.

What I'd like is something like this if you're reading CJ
in PSP or PS get a character, now make a new layer above it, fill the layer with the tint colour and set it to 'colour' mode.  Then slide the layer opacity slider around for different tint amounts.  The brightness would be controlled by the light level, and with this method you could properly simulate a coloured lighting effect which I think would be it's main use.

I'm not sure of exactly how to do this but maybe you can work it out if it's not too slow in game.

Edit: from the photoshop help file on that blend mode if it's any help:

'Creates a result color with the luminance of the base color and the hue and saturation of the blend color. This preserves the gray levels in the image and is useful for coloring monochrome images and for tinting color images.'

[Pumaman]

This is an interesting topic, and one that does need a thread to properly discuss it, I feel.

I implemented region tinting using a greyscale-then-colourize blend method, because I wasn't really sure how you guys wanted it to work. I tried various ways of blending the colours, but without being sure what sort of effect people want the end result to look like, it's hard to judge.

So your input on how you'd like it to work would be appreciated.

'Creates a result color with the luminance of the base color and the hue and saturation of the blend color. This preserves the gray levels in the image and is useful for coloring monochrome images and for tinting color images.'

See, that's pretty similar to what the existing method does. The luminance of each pixel is rougly equivalent to greyscaling it, and then re-applying the colour (which is what AGS does at the moment).

However, here's an experimental engine:
[removed, old version]

This uses the luminance vs hue & saturation method that you quoted. Try it out, let me know if it's more like what you're aiming for.

[deltamatrix]

That explains why when I set G to 102%. The char goes B/W. Doesn't make sense.
TINT is the wrong word to describe the feature in its current state.

That acwin is no different.

This is how I think it should work. The same way as TintScreen works only on characters.

When I set G to 110%, I'd expect the char to look slightly greener than normal. Trouble is, the calculation will be tricky.

[Cerulean]

One of the things I want for Birch L. Zebra is a structure made of blue glass. The current way will probably work out all right for me, since my main character happens to be black and white for the most part.

But I can see where it would make sense for most users to actually combine the colors if possible. It would probably be most common to give the character just a slight tinge of orange in firelight (like Guybrush at the volcano), or blue underwater. I guess you would need a percentage as well as a color in that case.

[scotch]

CJ, what I'd like now actually is something like this

Just 2 parameters to set, tint colour and tint amount (percentage).
then it does a 100% colourisation of the image with the tint colour and blends it back with the original coloured image at tint amount opacity.  That is what PS is doing as far as I can tell.  Sounds slow though..

I made a diagram

[Pumaman]

Aha, I see what you're getting at. I'll give that a go and see how it turns out.

As you comment though, it could well be slow, we'll see.

[Trapezoid]

If it's too slow, what about altering the RBG levels of the sprite, like you can do with a hi-color background? Would that be quicker?

[BOYD1981]

What I'd like is something like this if you're reading CJ
in PSP or PS get a character, now make a new layer above it, fill the layer with the tint colour and set it to 'colour' mode.  Then slide the layer opacity slider around for different tint amounts.  The brightness would be controlled by the light level, and with this method you could properly simulate a coloured lighting effect which I think would be it's main use.

i've just been playing with that now, i've actually found the results are better when you use a Multiply layer...

this is a colour layer


this is a multiply layer


bother layers are at 100% opacity

[scotch]

no that's definately much worse.. and not the effect you want.. multiply only makes darker colours (I use them for colouring lineart) and we don't want the brightness of the image to change, just the colour (we have light levels already)

[eVOLVE]

Glad others feel the same way Scotch, you got exactly the way I feel it should look... Doing it that way, you can simulate specially coloured lights in certain areas that don't completely turn an object a certain colour (mainly because of radiosity)...

That probably made no sense either, but yeah, just look at scotch's nice tint colour diagram

Tnx Pumaman for the effort

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

(mainly because of radiosity)...

Whoa whoa whoa evolve, this ain't a 3D art program

Seriously though, thinking about ways I might want to use this feature, I came up with either: 1. At a certain point in a game I want some kind of sunset scene, recycling a bg and character except adding a colour tint, and 2. A "redout" death scene.

Not that I have any idea whether this can be done using the present system or not, just thought I'd add my two cents.

[scotch]

These are 3d adventures though Archangel, with the perspective and scaling  perhaps I'm the only one thinking of rays bouncing around scenes and indirect lighting..

I'd use this almost everywhere.. I rarely use white light or grey shadows and even if it's just subtle tint I'm sure it'll improve the images somewhat. And as archangel says it'd be useful for sunsets or any scene where light is coloured strongly, you'd have to change characters views as it is now.

[remixor]

Seriously though, thinking about ways I might want to use this feature, I came up with either: 1. At a certain point in a game I want some kind of sunset scene, recycling a bg and character except adding a colour tint, and 2. A "redout" death scene.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't these require the method Boyd, not scotch, suggested?  I think on the whole scotch's would be more useful.

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

* Archangel corrects remixor

[remixor]

lol, ok.  But how would you do a redout death sequence with scotch's method?  Wouldn't you need a multiply layer?  Look at the difference between the two pics Boyd posted.

[scotch]

Well a redout death sequence is pretty vague.. depends how you'd want it to look.  I'd imagine you'd be tinting the whole screen though, not just the character.. a multiply blend might look good.. although you could do it with the colour method I showed, it's kind of a different thing to character tinting though.

[GarageGothic]

I'm not sure why we are disussing layer effects. Is it because that is how it's done technically? When I imagine the tint function, I see it more as similar to the RGB adjust in Photoshop (except without the possibility of only adjusting dark, light or mid-tones). where you just raise (or lower!) the RGB values of each pixel all over the image with a certain figure.

[Pumaman]

Ok, here's a new experimental version:

http://www.agsforums.com/agsedit.zip

It includes a new editor as well as engine, to let you set the Amount parameter.

I've changed it so that you now enter normal RGB values (0-255) for the tint, and then a percentage (0-100) for the tint amount. Setting the amount to 100 will give a result identical to the current version, and lower amounts should yield results similar to what scotch posted, hopefully.

Give it a go and let me know.

[eVOLVE]

From what I've tested (a few limited areas) it works exactly as I'd hoped Now there are gonna be some excellent effects here >

Nice one CJ!