Material Colors

[cjprowant]

What is the easiest way to get the colors of the siding, shake, and flat panels in the columns, garage doors, and bay window to be exactly the same color. Is there any way to do this in chief without taking the materials to PS?

[Matteus]

Go to the Plans Material and edit yuur wallmaterial. Make the colour of the pattern the same as the map.
Edit the colour of the pattern and make it appear in the palettewindows favourite.
Make a new material (Colour) by using that favourite colour in the palette window.
Save the new material it and there you have it!

[Tim O'Donnell]

your siding and shake textures are images that are tiled on the model surface...the only way to change the colors in those images is to alter them in an outside program..do it to a copy of the texture for use in a new material, so you do not lose the original textures

[Matteus]

Originally posted by Tim O'Donnell
your siding and shake textures are images that are tiled on the model surface...the only way to change the colors in those images is to alter them in an outside program..do it to a copy of the texture for use in a new material, so you do not lose the original textures

But... I think the issue here is to extract only the colour from the material used on the walls so that that colour can be used on the doors etc.

It can allso be done by copy the material used on the walls and then remove the texture map and the patttern from it and then save as a Colour material.

[Roger Rines]

An approach for creating color swatches that will be consistent or accurate to colors on other images or screen locations is to use a screen color selection tool. A free tool that will do this is called Color Picker, version 4.0. This handy program allows a user to create various color palettes from any color seen on a screen. It has a lot of neat features that help in selecting the right pixel through its adjustable magnification window and by allowing the mouse to be moved 1-pixel at a time by the keyboard's arrow keys.

This software won't change a color embedded in an image used for a texture, but it can be as an aid in changing the color in a texture, or used to create a new color swatch or to aid in the creation of a new color by using the color number details the software displays in its color analysis area. With this tool and a calibrated monitor, you should be able to get your colors very close to the color swatches selected. In addition, the program will tell you if the color is Web-Safe. This is only important if you intend to display the image on a web site so I wouldn't let it be of much concern except in special cases.

Here is what the Color Picker program looks like when a color is selected:


All the details needed to recreate that color in Chief Architects Color Chooser screen can be found on the screen above and entered into the fields shown below:


As can be seen, the color selected by Color Picker from another source has now been duplicated in the Chief Architects Color Chooser option and it can now be saved in the temporary palette or used in a plan color detail. To get the colors to match, just type the color information numbers shown on the Color Picker screen into Chief's Color Chooser screen and you'll have an exact color along with the numerical information needed to get paint matched to that color.

[Tim O'Donnell]

Originally posted by Matteus
But... I think the issue here is to extract only the colour from the material used on the walls so that that colour can be used on the doors etc.

It can allso be done by copy the material used on the walls and then remove the texture map and the patttern from it and then save as a Colour material.

cjprowant alludes to the desire for all aspects of the model be color matched...I only state the colors of the images used for textures need to be altered in an outside program to get the shake and siding to be color matched...the solid colors, that do not use an image for a texture can be done as Matteus has indicated

[cjprowant]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I am still somewhat confused...I will need to try some of your ideas and see what I can come up with.

My desire is to be able, in Chief if possible, to take a stock siding finish and a stock shake finish and make them exactly the same color. I would like this color to be custom as well.....

This seems to be a rather straight forward desire in other programs I have used. Maybe it will get better in chief with additional releases.

[Dermot Dempsey]

There is no reason to use the Color Picker program to figure out what color values to enter into Chief.

If you look at the right side of Chief's Color Chooser dialog shown above, you might notice a little eyedropper tool. This is a new feature in V10 that will let you pick up any color that is currently shown your cumputer screen. This will allow you to easily match colors to digital photos, textures, or anything else you can see on your screen.

[Tony Marshall]

Dermot thanks for that info, I did not realise the dropper worked that way. It will be very usefull indeed.

Tony

[Jack]

Tim, I've run into this on occasion where the color of images/textures needs to be altered for presentation. Which outside programs are you refering to to make that happen? I know there is" picture painter" which still has limitations. Are there any that create new images/textures with colors the way you want them to be added to chief?

[Tim O'Donnell]

i mainly use psp10, but there are many good graphics editors..here is a free one:

http://www.irfanview.com/

[Jack]

Thanks for the reply Tim. I looked over the web site for Irfaview, the freeware and was wondering if you were familiar with all the plug-ins they offer and which ones I might be needing , if any, to alter chief textures and images or to create new ones. I'm not real sure how all this is done. Any more help would be great!

[Tim O'Donnell]

it's FREEWARE, get them all..not sure what they all do..I know some of them are used to compress various file formats, many of them are so you can work with various file formats (ie Adobe files and filters, acad files, lightwave, etc..)

[lbuttery]

HI:


If I want to change the color of the front door, how do I get the color chooser to appear so that I can use the eye dropper to select the front door color from a .JPG ?


I have tried various things but can't find the color chooser.

Do I need to be plan mode or 3D mode or .... ?

Lew

[lbuttery]

Never mind, I found another thread that pointed me to help db article #730



http://www.chiefarchitect.com/usera...p?faqNumber=730


Lew