Post by a Chunk on Jan 2, 2019 17:36:03 GMT
Read article at our new site: www.nextleveldesign.org/index.php?/featured-content/articles/color-theory-in-level-design-r12/
This article from the Valve Developer Community Wiki is a good introduction to Color Theory. It starts out by presenting the very basics:
The color wheel is set up to show 12 important colors. 3 are primary, 3 are secondary (mixing the primary colors) and 6 tertiary colors (created by mixing primary and secondary colors). The primary colors form a triangle, (Yellow, Blue and Red). The secondary colors (Green, Purple and Orange are directly in between the primary colors). These also form an upside down triangle. The tertiary colors are in between the primary and secondary colors and will provide the shades of colors.
Next, we take a look at Color Perception:
Colors found next to each other blend well, colors directly across contrast each other, and colors 1/3 the way round help accent. This means if yellow were chosen then the colors yellowy-green, pale orange, blue, red, and purple can all work with it if used properly. The key comes from the fact that if yellowy-green is chosen to work with the yellow then using blue becomes tricky as blue doesn't work cleanly with yellowy-green.
Most of us have some degree of natural awareness about the impact different colors have on us.
This impact is something that we should keep in mind when designing levels: Every color has an inbuilt meaning and using that meaning is what allows level designers to create an atmosphere in their creations. For example in Half Life 2 pale blue lights to create a cold feeling in the combine citadel. Warm yellow lights to create a comfortable feeling inside the Black Mesa East. Half Life 2 uses this as a practice and every level designer can as well.
We also get some good advice to be wary of overdoing it:
A nearly ubiquitous rookie mistake is saturation. Most everything in the world isn't a specific color, it's white where one of its wavelengths comes through better. As such, a yellow lamp in theory should be a white lamp with a little bit of yellow added in. Unless you explicitly want to create over-saturation, keep this in mind!
Finally, the article discusses how to create a 'point of focus'. Points of focus can be created in multiple ways - color is one of them:
The simplest way to give a point focus with color and light is accents and contrasts, a bright light in a dark room, a blue traffic cone in a line of red ones. As stated before contrasts and accents can work well in a scene so its often not hard to include a point of focus. The key becomes making it the right object at the right time.
The quotes above are just a portion of the article. Read the whole thing here - developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Color_Theory_in_Level_Design