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Cordell: Hi everyone, and thanks for watching 3dmotive.com.
My name is Cordell Felix and on this video I will show you how to implement
color correction using a color lookup table with Unreal Development Kit.
I will be using my Dream Warehouse environment to demonstrating using
a color lookup table.
I will be using Photoshop CS6 and UDK for this video.
This video assumes that you have a basic knowledge of both programs.
A color lookup table works by taking a screenshot of your environment
and using a Photoshop adjustment layer to adjust color, contrast and more
to finalize the look of your in-game environment.
Let's get started.
I'm going to get rid of the color lookup table that's currently
plugged into my environment.
You can see that it looks a lot different.
Some of the colors are less saturated, and it just looks starker overall.
I have some extra post process effects going on like vignette and tone mapping
that I'm going to leave on.
The first thing you need to do is grab the RGB table from the UDN website.
I have it up here and I will link it in the description.
You could also just Google UDK color lookup table and it will be one of the first links here.
Now, just scroll down then save out this link right here.
It's telling you not to copy this picture and to right click and save out this picture here.
So, go ahead and do that.
And there we go.
I need to know what direction I want to take my environment in.
So I can take this into a western kind of style.
I can make it warmer.
I can make it colder.
I can make the lights a lot brighter.
So as long as you know what direction you want to go this will be a lot easier.
So the next step is that we need to take a screenshot of the environment.
I'm going to use this little Windows app here called the snipping tool.
I like to use this a lot.
You can just use print screen if you want, and just crop it out in Photoshop.
So, I'm just going to take that and put this in Photoshop.
I'll just paste it there.
We need to drag the RGB table we downloaded from the UDN website into this image
and it has to be on top of the environment layer.
I have the folder open here and I'll just drag the RGB table on top of it.
Hit enter to commit.
And you see that it's on top of the environment layer.
So I like to place it in the bottom right like this and it kind of just snaps.
With the screenshot and RGB table in here we can now apply some adjustment layers
to change the overall effect of the environment.
The adjustment layers can be found right here, this little half circle,
and it will bring up a bunch of filters.
I'll be using these to change how my environment looks.
The first thing I want to do is brighten up the image a little bit.
So I'll go in here and use levels, and I'll just use these sliders here.
You can see that's really brightening it up.
That's probably good enough.
Then I can just add more.
I'll add some saturation because I think the colors are little bit dulled.
So, I can saturate colors a lot more.
That looks about right.
I can go in here and mess with the reds or whatever so I can make my reds more intense.
Or I can change the red color completely and it'll be a different color in the engine also.
I'll just keep it red for this.
I'm going to mess with some curves now.
You can really get your environment to look warmer or cool really fast with this.
So, I like to do each channel.
Let's throw a brightness and contrast on there.
Mess with the sliders.
Color balance is a really powerful one.
You can mess with the shadows, the midtones and the highlights.
Let's mess with the shadows a little bit, make them a different color.
Let's mess with the midtones and see what we got.
It's good to mess with all the settings.
I'm pretty happy with how it looks now.
I'll go in later and throw a saturation on here and just mess with the hues completely,
maybe just blow them out completely to show that this still works in the editor
when you plug in the color lookup table.
So, with all these adjustment layers on top of this we now have this RGB
table that looks completely different from what it did before.
If I hide all these layers you'll see that's back to its old color.
So what the engine will be doing, it will be pulling information
from this RGB table and use it to color correct the screen.
I need to save out this RGB table as a new PNG in a different file.
So I'm going to hold control and left click on the layer for the RGB table.
It has to be in this space here and you'll see the marching ants covering
the image, and then hit control + shift + C, which will copy the image exactly
how it is in that area and then I'll just do file, new and then it will have the dimension
right and then just hit control + V and there we go.
Let's save this RGB table as a new PNG.
So just go to file, save as and then I'm in the same folder and PNG.
I'll just name this cool tone LUT, and then just hit save.
Let's do none and none.
Let's hop back into UDK and import the RGB table we just made.
So go to import, and double click the RGB table to import.
So there's a couple of settings we need to do.
There's compression no alpha because we have no alpha,
then underneath the LOD group we need to go to color lookup table right here.
So make sure that's on here, and then hit OK.
All we have to do now is plug the LUT into the world properties of the scene.
So if you drag this a little over to the right where this is still selected and go to view,
world properties and then it's underneath this tab here the default post process settings.
Just go down to where it says color grading lookup, and check that on.
So let me put this over here a little bit so you can see the effect when I plug it in.
So when I plug in the LUT you'll see that it drastically changes the scene.
It's a lot brighter.
My colors are a lot more saturated.
My red is very saturated compared to the rest of the colors.
Just like I had it in the Photoshop setup.
As I said, I would go back and do some drastic changes to the RGB table.
So let me go back to Photoshop.
And with some of these layers already here, I'll just mess with them.
Maybe I'll just mess with these colors completely and just blow them out.
Let's make them all purple.
Okay.
So now with those new changes all I have to do is save out this new RGB table again.
So let's do that, as I did before.
I'll call this one crazy LUT.
Let's plug this one in now too.
Do the same settings.
Okay.
So if I plug this new one in you'll see that it looks just like the Photoshop.
So it changed all the colors. It's all pink now.
And it's all realtime.
As you can see, a color lookup table can be a powerful tool used to adjust
the final look of your scene with just a few adjustment layers in Photoshop.
I encourage you to experiment with more adjustment layers
to try to get the look and feel that you want of your scene.
You can go from anything to Western to SciFi, from warm to cool,
from dark to bright without having to add any extra lights or anything fancy.
This will just give you those results really quickly.
That's it for this quick tip.
My name is Cordell Felix and thanks again for watching 3dmotive.com.