Reproducing Real World

Reproducing Real World Light

White Balance
Occasionally the question arises as to how to reproduce the "real" color of light sourc environment. I set out to research this subject, and found a lot of very contradictory approaches try to categorize light sources by their color temperature. Some then try t some meaningful way of converting that color temperature to RGB values to use in p Lightwave or Cinema 4D. Ultimately these approaches all fail to take into account se work against trying to come up with a unified approach to light coloring and renderin The human visual system is very good at "white balancing" what we look at. As long a viewing contains a continuous spectrum of colors, we interpret the light as "white". I incandescent light we light our homes with is quite orange. Daylight is very blue. Flu from sickly greens to reddish purples. And yet, we see all these lighting situations as neutrally colored. In the real world, light consists of all visible colors, not just red, green, and blue wave color system that we use in computer graphics arose out of a peculiarity of human pe structures in our eyes called "cones" that respond to red, green, and blue light source monochromatic yellow light excites both the red and green cones in our eyes, and we Such a yellow light in the real world would not allow a red object to appear red, or a g appear green. But in computer graphics a yellow light has both a red and green comp allows objects with those colors to appear fully colored. This is a limitation of many c programs at the moment. Film cameras cannot compensate for the varying shades of light in the way that our v Thus, we have daylight film which has heavy orange filtering to tone down the blue q light. We have indoor film which has a boosted blue response to even out the amber fluorescent situations, we can use a combination of film type and filters to color bala are photographing. If we were to pick a particular color of light, say daylight, and say and photograph everything, indoors and out, with a film stock that renders daylight indoor shots would be shades of orange and amber, and outdoor shots under blue sk intensely blue. This would be undesirable. Thus too it is undesirable to pick a similar approach with our 3D rendering of light. W relative - and choose a light color to be "white" in our scene, with other types of light colored relative to that one. In this way we can produce our synthetic "photos" to pro result in our final renders. Of course, to understand how different types of light sour other, it is important to understand how these light sources work. To do this we are g basic types of light source.

The first group of light sources are the black body illuminants. These are materials th produce light when they are heated. The sun is a black body illuminant, as is a candle The color of light of these types of sources can be characterized by their Kelvin tempe Note that this temperature has nothing to do with how "hot" a light source is - just w color of its light. A light source with a low Kelvin temperature is very red. One with a Kelvin temperature is very blue. More accurately, when we see two light sources side a scene, the higher Kelvin light appears more blue, and the lower Kelvin light appear red. Its all relative. Black body illuminants produce a fairly even, continuous spectrum of colors, and so perceived as "white" by our visual sense. Therefore, in the absence of comparative lig sources in our scene, these should be rendered with warm, nearly white lights. Below is a chart of some common Kelvin Light Source temperatures coupled with the Equivalents. These equivalents were arrived arbitrarily - I eyeballed them. There wer of converters I found online, each taking a different approach. One of them colored t sources by reference - you input a Kelvin temperature that you want to be "white" an temperature to convert into an RGB value. Visually, however, the results were disapp They were scientifically correct, but failed to take into account the adaptability of the visual sense. The other converter did even worse, ending up with greenish shades in 4500K range that black body illuminants are incapable of creating. So, the alternativ use my eye and judgment to arrive at these values.

Black Body Illuminants

Bluish high temperature outdoor light contrasts with low temperature incandescent light. You can download a Cinema 4D R8 scene file with all of the lights in this article pre-defined here.

Reproducing Real World

Light Source Candle 40W Tungsten 100W Tungsten Halogen Carbon Arc High Noon Sun Direct Sunlight Overcast Sky Clear Blue Sky

Kelvin temperature 1900 2600 2850 3200 5200 5400 6000 7000 20000

R G B Values 255, 147, 41 255, 197, 143 255, 214, 170 255, 241, 224 255, 250, 244 255, 255, 251 255, 255, 255 201, 226, 255 64, 156, 255

Co

Samples

Candle

Tungsten 40W

Tung

Halogen

Carbon Arc

High

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Direct Sun

Overcast Sky

Fluorescent Lights
These light sources produce light by creating a large amount of UV light via high volt electrical discharge through a tube filled with rare gasses. The UV light excites mater coating the tube to produce light through fluorescence. These lights have broad but s disjointed spectra. Depending on the quality of the tube and its intended purpose, th can vary in ways that cannot be described by black body illumination. In fact, the dis nature of fluorescent spectra begin to exceed the ability to characterize these colors a in RGB. These values and samples are again based on my personal observations of d source types.

Light Source Warm Fluorescent Standard Fluorescent Cool White Fluorescent Full Spectrum Fluorescent Grow Light Fluorescent Black Light Fluorescent

R G B Values 255, 244, 229 244, 255, 250 212, 235, 255 255, 244, 242 255, 239, 247 167, 0, 255

Colo

Samples

Reproducing Real World

Warm Fluorescent

Standard Fluorescent

Cool Whi

Full Spectrum Fluorescent

Grow Light Fluorescent

Black Lig

Gaseous Light Sources

This final type of light source usually involves a metallic gas under pressure being ex high voltage coil. They do not produce a continuous spectrum at all, but instead prod series of monochromatic lines of light energy. This confounds our ability to accuratel reproduce the full effect of how these lights look and interact with colors in a scene. F example, a standard mercury vapor lamp, such as found in older city street lights and lots, produces only a few lines of monochromatic light - a yellow, a green, a blue, and To the casual eye, the light looks somewhat "whitish" but in fact, red objects in such their color and appear black - there is no red component to the light at all. But in RG cannot produce a "purple-green" color without using red. Thus, red objects will still a red under such a simulated light. Until the day that 3D programs such as Cinema 4D to define light sources by their spectral output instead by RGB value, there isn't muc do about it. Again, the values in the following chart were eyeballed by myself, by looking at vario lights around my city.

Light Source Mercury Vapor Sodium Vapor Metal Halide

R G B Values 216, 247, 255 255, 209, 178 242, 252, 255

Colo

Reproducing Real World

High Pressure Sodium

255, 183, 76

Samples

Mercury Vapor

Sodium Vapor

Met

High Pressure Sodium

Conclusion

Remember, the values in the charts in this article are merely a starting point for your explorations and experiments. Particularly with the black body illuminants, the color lighting is all relative, so remember to adjust your values accordingly.
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James Hast