Color or Gray scale only for flipbook?

General Discussion
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#1

Hi, I’ trying to make some flame effect in UE4 and just starting to create flipbook base on blender’s fire simulation. After I looking for some tutorial and UE4 sample, its seem most of the time fire/ explosion effect using color texture and other effect using grayscale only. Then I did some testing show in the video below.

https://youtu.be/Nhzyhua3iFU
left one is color flipbook, left one is grayscale only

Its seem color flipbook is better a little bit on keeping the color contrast, also able to switch color using hue shift. But grayscale only method can control the color directly multiply the color you want and easier to control the color in niagara (particle system ) just simply adjust the particle color. But the color lost a bit contrast since I just simply multiply color on the grayscale texture. Maybe this is not huge difference in my case, but still want to know is there a recommended method or standard for effect texture?

#2

I personally prefer to use grayscale, but its really just a preference. both are fine.
To add color I either use a lerp and/or curves to apply color. (along some additional math to change contrast or what not)

4 Likes
#3

Thanks for the tip! Didn’t know that curve function before, just tried and seem this method has more control of the color, just like the “color ramp” in blender but can directly edit and see different inside game engine.