Post #1020954

2026-04-03 07:40 UTC

I&#39;m in that situation again where the colors in my game seem wrong to me. Grass is too neon/lime green. The most natural environments I&#39;ve seen are in Kingdom Come Deliverance II, so looking at videos of that. But, tweaking colors of environments is so hard. How the grass looks is not just about its own color, but equally much about the relative colors of trees, the sky, aperture and tonemapping. I&#39;m beginning to think that grass color variance is also vital to not make it look plastic.

Replies (4)

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-03 07:43

But damn, I don't know how to escape a never ending process of trying to tweak different elements more or less blindly. Even with references, it's super hard to figure out what elements (or relation of elements relative to each other), are vital and which are merely circumstantial. I feel like I'm missing some fundamentals in process.

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@bcace@mastodon.social 2026-04-03 07:51

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place "grass color variance is also vital" - agree, with green leaves and brown "tops" it's almost as if the same patch of grass changes color as the wind blows, just because the two components change relative positions.

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@vuntra_city@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-03 08:12

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place fwiw I think the colors in your environment already look great for its style, and if you tried to adjust them towards a more photorealistic range it'd look too drab. But it's always a good idea to experiment and see what works best.

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@der_On@calckey.anzui.dev 2026-04-03 20:41

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place In photography and also in CG renderings you mostly try to reduce the palette to some important colors and reduce other colors in saturation and or value. These adjustments need to be made based on what mood you want to deliver in your scene and can turn "chaotic" scenes into a clear direction/intention. So I would really recommend to do most of the coloring work in post processing. This reduces the number of variables you have to tinker with a lot. Reduction and adoption to the desired look is the key here. Check out some photography and cinematography coloring tutorials to get a basic understanding and feel for it.

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