Doughless That's basicsally what I was thinking. Haze would make things have a lighter grayer tone, like what we see when viewing mountain tops at a distance. Nscale models should account for that tone moreso than Oscale models when viewing the models from the same distance. And neither should be painted prototype factory color exactly, if replicating prototype fidelity matters.
That's basicsally what I was thinking. Haze would make things have a lighter grayer tone, like what we see when viewing mountain tops at a distance. Nscale models should account for that tone moreso than Oscale models when viewing the models from the same distance. And neither should be painted prototype factory color exactly, if replicating prototype fidelity matters.
I couldn't agree with you more Doughless.
On my last model I did a milky gray wash with an extremely small amount of blue added. I really liked the results. It created a distance effect.
TF
Track fiddler Now let's go back and look at that same prototypical barn from 500 feet. The haze factor and everything else you guys have been talking about factor in.
Now let's go back and look at that same prototypical barn from 500 feet. The haze factor and everything else you guys have been talking about factor in.
- Douglas
I think lighting is far more important than size. Just the difference between sunlight at mid day and sunlight in late afternoon is noticible, especially in how it makes reds and browns look. Even worse is the change in lighting between daylight and layout lighting. Worst are those old cool-white fluorescents, they were made with mostly blue and green phosphors, very little red, and consequently made everything red, starting with boxcars, look awful. The newred skinny tube fluorescents are a lot better. Incandescent lights are better too, but even they are so much different from daylight that they used to make color film balanced either for "daylight' or for "tungstun".
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
rrebell Brings back memories of when my eyesite was great, used to be able to read the small print on an N scale boxcar without a magnifier. Now I need a +4 in HO, aging sucks!
You hit the nail right on the head rrebell. You have no debate from me on that one
"Now go to a model of that barn on an N scale layout. 50 foot in N scale would be 3.75 inches. If you stick your hand 4 inches in front of your face and try to focus in on it, it almost hurts your eyes." Brings back memories of when my eyesite was great, used to be able to read the small print on an N scale boxcar without a magnifier. Now I need a +4 in HO, aging sucks!
Mike.
My You Tube
mbinsewi Track fiddler while I was cooling off in the air conditioning when I got home. It's that hot in MN? We got to the 80's a few days ago, but nothing close to needing A/C. Mike.
Track fiddler while I was cooling off in the air conditioning when I got home.
It's that hot in MN? We got to the 80's a few days ago, but nothing close to needing A/C.
No. Very very comfortable if you're spending Leisure Time sitting in the lawn chair in the shade.
I was in full Sun all day, no shade huffing 6x6 cedar timbers, dicing them up for notched posts, building a beefy custom railing on a deck.
80 degrees working really hard all day isn't cool like my air-conditioned living room when I get home..... Wiseguy
I never shut my air off for the four days of summer
Track fiddlerwhile I was cooling off in the air conditioning when I got home.
Track fiddlerThis is why I am saying the color of the model has to be altered to create that of what you would normally see in real life of the same color building.
Nope. I model what I see, color and all, as close as I can.
You can tell when "outside" weather starts to take over. Not many post, and a lot of relived thoughts on previous post.
I'm finally all fed and settled here. Judy made Taquitos for dinner yum yum
I hope no one thought I was being sarcastic when I got home from work because I wasn't. I read all your posts while I was cooling off in the air conditioning when I got home. I found your posts very interesting. I didn't find anything that I felt a strong need to debate. Except for one.
I didn't feel a strong need for debate but It was color blindness. I don't think color blindness or concept of color different from someone else has anything to do with anything here.
A color-blind person's perception of a prototypical building compared to a model of that same building.......Is the same as the perception of a non color blind person.
Doughless Edit: I'm not arguing possible physics here. I'm trying to understand the concept. If I'm looking at two pieces of sheet metal under exactly the same conditions side by side, one is 20' x 30' and the other is 2' x 3', I should percieve the smaller piece to be lighter in color because its smaller?
Edit: I'm not arguing possible physics here. I'm trying to understand the concept. If I'm looking at two pieces of sheet metal under exactly the same conditions side by side, one is 20' x 30' and the other is 2' x 3', I should percieve the smaller piece to be lighter in color because its smaller?
Respectfully no.
I am speaking of size as the relative factor but because of the different conditions is why the model is a different tone and hue of the full size building color...... Perception of how you see it, to replicate the condition on the model by somewhat changing the color of the prototypical building.
I hope I can create an example to explain what I'm thinking here.
Say your standing 50 feet away from a prototypical barn. That's standing relatively close considering a 50 ft Barn would be a small barn. You can see it very clearly and vibrantly in almost any condition.
Now go to a model of that barn on an N scale layout. 50 foot in N scale would be 3.75 inches. If you stick your hand 4 inches in front of your face and try to focus in on it, it almost hurts your eyes.
Let's say, normally we would look at that model barn on an N scale layout from 3 feet away. 3 ft in N scale is 480 ft prototypical.
This is why I am saying the color of the model is altered to create that of what you would normally see in real life of the same color building.
I hope this helps.
I think if you replicate the tone and hue conditions well, the building looks more realistic.
Thanks Mel. Man, you and everyone else have such interesting Concepts here, you guys are really starting to make me think. ..... a somewhat dangerous pastime for me you know
I don't know, I just got home from wxxk. I got to sit down, relax and think about this stuff for a while
Doughless rrebell The diferences in light and shadow diminish with distance so basicaly the further away you get, the more an item seems one color. Speaking of eye changes as we age, I was shocked when the eye doctor told me that my good eye was 20/20 a dozen years back, to me my site had gotten bad, it had but seems they never used to measure if you had better than 20/20, I gotta tell you 20/20 sucks to me. I hate wearing glasses to do what I used to do without. Then just as a general rule, model manufacturers should probably never ever paint their models according to the factory paint chip prototype color, and should instead have every paint job a bit light grayer to account for the distance created by scale.
rrebell The diferences in light and shadow diminish with distance so basicaly the further away you get, the more an item seems one color. Speaking of eye changes as we age, I was shocked when the eye doctor told me that my good eye was 20/20 a dozen years back, to me my site had gotten bad, it had but seems they never used to measure if you had better than 20/20, I gotta tell you 20/20 sucks to me. I hate wearing glasses to do what I used to do without.
The diferences in light and shadow diminish with distance so basicaly the further away you get, the more an item seems one color. Speaking of eye changes as we age, I was shocked when the eye doctor told me that my good eye was 20/20 a dozen years back, to me my site had gotten bad, it had but seems they never used to measure if you had better than 20/20, I gotta tell you 20/20 sucks to me. I hate wearing glasses to do what I used to do without.
Then just as a general rule, model manufacturers should probably never ever paint their models according to the factory paint chip prototype color, and should instead have every paint job a bit light grayer to account for the distance created by scale.
I'm a skeptic to a degree about the reflectiveness discussion. Here's why. Eventhough the color changes to our eye based upon how it reflects off of large surfaces, I would assume there would be more perceived changes to color the more surfaces there are.
The CSX loco pic has many different surfaces with which to capture light. Basically, some surfaces are in the light and others in the shadows. Our eye expects that when it sees many different geometric lines. The same light and shadow effect should also take place in a properly scaled model and a proper light source(s). Does sunlight reflect off of the ground back up to the loco moreso than layout lighting?
To represent the csx loco on our models, it would seem to me a modeler would have worry less about overall precision of color compared to the "factory blue" and more about having a difference in color between surfaces exposed to light and surfaces in the shadows. The loco should be painted so that the many horizontal surfaces angled towards the sky are lighter than the surfaces angled towards the ground.
But the amount of refractory angles wouldn't be the same for a smooth sided boxcar (unlike a military tank). Not many surfaces to reflect light. So to me, the only difference in color in that situation would be caused by distance, IOW, particulate matter in the air. So we would want to paint an N scale model a more faded color than an O scale model to account for that, and also a flatter sheen.
To fade the color, I would "lighten" the standard color by mixing in light gray, not white. While simply lightens the color, gray accounts for the haze.
And to scale down sheen, never ever leave any model glossy.
And nobody even mentioned color-blindness.
There was one post that mentioned how I don't perceive colors the same as you, which I think was about as close as anyone else has been.
WP Lives
kasskaboose It makes sense that reducing size alters a color. Consider household paint. I was told to always use gallons of paint for rooms since the color is different when put in a quart container. Even mixing a gallon and quart together won't help
It makes sense that reducing size alters a color. Consider household paint. I was told to always use gallons of paint for rooms since the color is different when put in a quart container. Even mixing a gallon and quart together won't help
Size or quantity of paint has nothing to do with perceived Color. Get a paint chit from the store , put against the wall you want to paint, but beware: that 2 inches square paint chit will look nothing like the 70 square feet of wall you paint. The color is 100% identical, the scale and environment have changed. Likewise on our models.
”Scale color” is a complicated beast, but comes down to atmosphere. Everything is 87 times further away than reality (in HO). Even on clear day in a busy environment , there’s dust and maybe humidity in the air, which mutes color, and the only way we can simulate it is by muting paint colors. And that can not be scaled.
If you were blessed with a 100x100 foot layout, the color of freight cars won,t visibly change no matter where you view. If we could magically have scale color, the cars right in front of you would show as their true colors, the cars 100’ away from you would blend into almost uniform hues..
Maybe if you had an awesome fog machine and killer ventilation...
SeeYou190When light bounces from one surface to another some of the spectrum of the light is absorbed by the first surface. This diminishes the color available when it hits the second surface, thus the color reflected to your eye is different. The physics is very complicated, and well beyond the ability to be described in a brief forum response.
This is what I was trying to say.
On outdoor movie sets, I noticed they add different colour filters to the lighting throughout the day as the light changes even though they are shooting the same small area.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
It makes sense that reducing size alters a color. Consider household paint. I was told to always use gallons of paint for rooms since the color is different when put in a quart container. Even mixing a gallon and quart together won't help.
MirobroKevin, give it up. The term your looking for is "scale effect". As a scale modeler and a model railroader I have waded into this discussion a couple of times. You are right, for what ever reason model railroaders can't seem to wrap their heads around this concept.
https://www.cybermodeler.com/color/scale_effect.shtml
Gary
Color matching can be learned. I was taught by a guy who worked as a color guy for a major paint company, I will never be as good as him, he could do in one try what took me three or more.
Color is a tough act to follow. Few people are really good at it. The ones that are successful make an excess of six figures a year.
Judy and I had signature colors for accent walls in our house that we came up with refining color over many years. The key word is many years. They eventually became perfect colors. (For us)
With these accent walls we strived to pick a perfect neutral color for the rest of the house.
A selected weekend we painted all the walls in the common areas. The color was beautiful. It was an earth tone mud color.
At 4:13 p.m. for 2 days our beautiful earth tone color turned into a split pea soup. We couldn't live with that green hued barf. We painted it all over again.
You know that little color sample on the card your bring home and try to imagine it on the wall. Good luck with that
Color is extremely difficult in a normal environment. I do believe even more difficult in a created environment.
Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts on this. A lot of good points here.
At the risk of sounding like a fool (or perhaps of being a fool and merely making that plain) I think there might be a case for having a different view of color and color density as the scale gets smaller. And that is, the smaller the scale of the model the more different colors -- the greater number of colors -- our eye is trying to take in at any one glance: the red barn, but also the yellow locomotive, the blue boxcar, the green tree, the brown cow, blue sky, and so on. Taking in all those colors - perhaps wildly clashing colors at that - and our mind thinks "circus clown" or "gumball machine." (or Google Images "OppoSuits" Yikes!)
Even if all the colors are each accurate. That can be the impression in looking any a model of any size versus the "real world." And quite possibly that sense of unreality gets greater the smaller the models and the more dense the color (and texture) variety is in our field of vision.
Stated another way, imagine a 20 car freight train with every car a different color. Trackside we see one or two cars at a time, so one or two colors at a time. In N scale we see the entire train, all at the same time. Those are two different impressions our brains are trying to process.
This is in addition to the fact that in reality that bright red barn and the stark white farm house are likely much further away from any other strongly colored structures in reality than they tend to be on our layouts.
Eric White points out that atmosphere plays a role and of course we are "further away" from our N scale models than we are from our O scale models even if we are just as close physically.
So perhaps a case can be made to tone down the color palette in smaller scales. My 2 cents.
Dave Nelson
riogrande5761Well, as mentioned earlier, the reason why size affects color shade is because the smaller item is small and normally viewed indoors so the indoor lighting makes the color shades look dark. /mystery solved.
.
Wrong.
It has to do with suface area and the way light reflects from one surface to the other on larger objects.
A model will never be able to miniaturize the way light reflects from one surface to another and changes the color percieved by the eye. This takes surface area, and models have less of it, so the effect is lessened.
When light bounces from one surface to another some of the spectrum of the light is absorbed by the first surface. This diminishes the color available when it hits the second surface, thus the color reflected to your eye is different. The physics is very complicated, and well beyond the ability to be described in a brief forum response. However, it is impossible to reproduce this effect on a miniature. It must either be painted on (my preference), simulated with different warmth light sources, or enhanced in digital photographs.
If you really want the mystery solved, I suggest you read all the well thought out and explained topics on this subject that can be found on military scale modeling forums or in Fine Scale Modeler back issues.
There are also excellent books for artists on how to duplicate the lighting effects of large geometric objects.
Look at this picture of a CSX locomotive. It is safe to assume it is all pretty much CSX corporate blue.
Now we have the same picture all mish-mashed around. Look at the extremes of color from light baby blue to dark navy blue. This cannot be duplicated on a model due to small surface area and less reflective light coming back to the viewer.
This is all because of surface area and the diminished spectrum of reflected light.
Yes, to answer Track Fiddler's question, the size of the model does effect color.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
rrebell Do you all relize that the blue I see is not the blue you see. If you don't have any color issues the colors we see are slightly different from one another, has to do with the cones ect. in the eyes. Yes it is very slight but I find this interesting. Now back on subject, an objects color can be changed by reflections, distance and size. The size change comes from the total light we recieve and surounding colors. The side of barn veiwed close up will be precieved different than say a red postage stamp surounded by yellow flowers, again these changes can be slight. Guess I remember more than I thought from art school.
Do you all relize that the blue I see is not the blue you see. If you don't have any color issues the colors we see are slightly different from one another, has to do with the cones ect. in the eyes. Yes it is very slight but I find this interesting. Now back on subject, an objects color can be changed by reflections, distance and size. The size change comes from the total light we recieve and surounding colors. The side of barn veiwed close up will be precieved different than say a red postage stamp surounded by yellow flowers, again these changes can be slight. Guess I remember more than I thought from art school.
Reminds me of quote from the movie Blade Runner: "Roy Batty: If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBaXd7dz404
So basically model train companies shouldn't worry too much because every customer will see their paint job differently. Sounds like a losing battle!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Everybody’s eyes do see colors and light slightly differently. That is why in television we use a vector scope and a wave form monitor instead of eyeballing it. We adjust the picture color and brightness based on the devices. Anyway there is such a thing as scale color and it is as Kevin said because at a smaller size less light bounces off of an object so it looks darker. The difference is most noticeable in dark colors or black. Far off mountains look faded because of the stuff in the air. However once in a while there is a perfectly clear day and the mountains around here suddenly look a lot closer. Before computers, movies used a lot of models for special effects. To make the miniature scenes look more realistic they would use fog machines to simulate haze and they would also put wedding veil in front of the camera to add to the effect. This added distance to the model.
"It all looks the same to me"
Homer, 701BC