Imagine this: You’ve worked with a 3D modeling partner to ideate, create, troubleshoot, and approve 3D models of your range of products. But when you finally reach the QA stage of the process, you realize you have a problem. When it comes to color, you and your external partner are seeing very different things.
This is a common pain point in 3D content creation. It’s not easy to achieve vivid, realistic colors and it’s even more difficult to find two viewers that translate color palettes the same way.
But this is a huge problem for ecommerce. Augmented Reality is desirable for its nimble realism, and companies rely on the technology to reproduce real-life as faithfully as possible. On websites, the importance of color cannot be overstated. It can positively influence how often a customer visits a website and affect the responses of online shoppers.
Buyers agree that accurate color is a sticking point. Inaccuracies between what they see on the website and what arrives in real life can lead to loss of sales, increased returns, complaints, and worst case scenario, turn consumers off of a brand completely — 58% of shoppers said they would not buy again after experiencing color inconsistencies.
Fortunately, new color matching technology is available for open source download and it’s already changing the QA game for companies across the board. Read on to learn about Khronos’ latest tone mapper and why it’s resulting in reduced guesswork, shorter QA cycles, and faster updates.
The tone mapping problem
It might seem like a minor detail, but the 3D model pipeline can get bogged in the QA phase, in particular for color matching problems.
Viewers translate color differently and pipelines often omit tone mapping. On top of those challenges, traditional filmic tone mappers have a limited range of colors, especially when displaying images to standard sRGB monitors and screens. This means 3D objects with filmic tone mapping can appear washed out and not true to life.
These color issues pose an even greater challenge for the rest of the QA process. If clients aren’t looking at the same QA environment as their external creative partners, the process becomes overly complicated and drawn out, and scale is inhibited.
How Khronos’ newest offering can help
With the release of the Khronos PBR Neutral Tone Mapper, 3D assets rendered using physically-based rendering (PBR) can finally be displayed with true-to-life colors.
With faithful reproduction of the product’s base color, hue and saturation when using PBR under grayscale lighting, businesses no longer have to wonder (and worry) whether they’re on the same page as their content modeling partner. Now, everyone in the content production pipeline has the ability to create and display photorealistic models in accurate, vivid color.
There are advantages to ensuring everyone’s on the same page, including:
- Artists can verify color values within the texture file, thereby eliminating guesswork from the equation.
- Efficiency is increased from both shorter QA cycles and faster updates.
This development is game-changing for ecommerce in particular, making it easier to present colors that are truer to the real deal than ever before.
How you can ensure your QA process is smooth when it comes to color
As mentioned above, if you and your modeling partner (or internal team) are not utilizing the same viewer, chances are you will see different things. This can inhibit your ability to accurately and efficiently move models through the pipeline for eventual use. Rather than endless cycles of feedback and adjustments, just adopt one rule: always use the same viewer!
For additional tips and help with building your perfect modeling pipeline, please reach out to our team at info@loft3di.com.