Vision 2021 Conventional Color Inaccuracy

[Jesse Cogswell]

Good morning.  Did something change in regards to color rendering between Vision 2019 and Vision 2021?  A Source 4 with no color is reading super amber and not at all realistic.

 

Screen capture from Vision 2021

 

Screen Capture from Vision 2019.  Though still a little pink, this is much closer to what a N/C Source 4 10degree looks like

[bbudzon]

6 hours ago, Jesse Cogswell said:

Did something change in regards to color rendering between Vision 2019 and Vision 2021?

Yes. We had bug reports stating that Vision's color temperature renderings were not accurate in 2019.

 

Here is a picture I took of 2019 rendering color temperatures between 2800K and 7000K:

 

Here is the calibration we did for 2020, basing our results from information we found on Chauvet's website:

 

We found that these results were more accurate that 2019 and more indicative of what would be seen around the 6000K white balance point.

[Jesse Cogswell]

While it skews a little blue, I find that Vectorworks is much more accurate with color.  I think Vision is skewing far too dramatic to the warm side.  I do a lot of museum lighting design and use sources at 3000K, and if they were as orange as Vision is showing, I would absolutely be fired.  All I'm saying is to physically get a Source 4 in the office and turn it on and compare it to Vision's output.  At this point, I don't know if I can use Vision 2021 to do previz for shows with conventional fixtures if every light is going to look like it has 1/2 CTO in it.  I suppose I can set those fixtures to a color temperature of 5000K or so.

 

Maybe as a feature request, could we get a white balance document setting to choose what color temperature should be white?

 

[bbudzon]

4 minutes ago, Jesse Cogswell said:

While it skews a little blue, I find that Vectorworks is much more accurate with color.  I think Vision is skewing far too dramatic to the warm side.

It does seem like VW is white balanced more on the 3200K side of things. So, it makes sense that Vision appears "warmer" than VW.

 

5 minutes ago, Jesse Cogswell said:

All I'm saying is to physically get a Source 4 in the office and turn it on and compare it to Vision's output.

To perform an accurate comparison, a camera would need to be used. The human eye auto balances and this is difficult to mimic in rendering software. The biggest question when using said camera would be, "What white balance is that camera set to?"

 

I believe the real solution to this problem, as you've pointed out, is allowing control over the white balance via a setting in Vision 😉  I'll bring this feedback to our next meeting!

 

In the meantime, and again as you've pointed out, you may have to adjust the color temperature of fixtures Vision-side. Leveraging multiple selections and the fixture groupings will make this significantly easier!

[klinzey]

Also, remember Vectorworks does have white balance setting. View>Set Lighting Options...

By default Vectorworks is white balanced at Indoor (3400K), I think Vision is set for something closer to 5500K.

 

By default, the 3200K light will look "whiter" leaning toward blue in Vectorworks than it does in Vision but if you adjust the white balance in Vectorowks to 5500K it will look more amber. If you want to experiment in Vectorworks, Viewports have their own individual White Color Temperature setting and it's rather sticking to see the difference changing the white balance makes.

[Jesse Cogswell]

I understand that the human eye does sort of an "auto-balance" when it comes to color temperature, but the human eye is what I most commonly light for.  So setting the base color temperature to 3400K would be tricky in that it would cause the moving lights (which have a native CCT of between 6000 and 7000K) to read much more blue than as the human eye would see, which would not look as good on a moving light show.  I guess what I'm saying is that I felt the older color temperature model did a good job of balancing the extremes and was more accurate to my eye, which is what is most important to me when I'm previsualizing.

 

That being said, I am also currently working on a filmed opera in a traditional stage house with primarily Source 4s (which is where the above screen shots come in).  Because we are primarily using conventional tungsten-halogen sources, the cameras are all going to be set with a base white color temperature of 3800K, so the default Vision white balance of 6000K is unfortunately going to be hard to compensate for in previs without grabbing every single light and raising its color temperature by 2000K (though that's looking like the only solution I have at the moment), but I also need the Vision 2021 absolute DMX cameras to simulate accurate camera movement and placement, so I'm kind of in a pickle.

 

If/when a white balance setting is added, would there be a way to add an option for "false" color similar to the old color model to better reflect what lighting looks like to the human eye?  With any luck, this covid situation will end and I will go back to lighting for a live audience, and I'd love to be able to accurately simulate what a mixed source show will look like for them.