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Importance of monitor calibration in a video-game production.

ng.aniki
polycounter lvl 13
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ng.aniki polycounter lvl 13
Hello,

I need some help over here.
The current procedure in my company to calibrate our environments lighting (brightness and saturation) is the following:
-Some of our monitors are using default settings, every employee can configure it the way he wants.
-When environment are done, or after the 1st pass, we do an other lighting pass on some bad television with default settings. (And dynamic contrast/saturation enabled). The result is often really different from our work station, constrast is really high, same for the saturation.
And we tweak lighting to have the best render on those televisions.
(Basically, the game will look less contrasty and saturated on a well calibrated monitor)

The idea of one of our boss is the following: He wants the game to look good on any monitor. Even the wrost ones.
I have to say, the dynamic contrast of some televisions is completely terrible. Some dark areas become completely black and we can't see anything at all.

My point of view is that, if some player have crappy settings on their television, they probably are used to it. I think it is sad to focus on the render with those bad settings, and therefor reduce quality on good/calibrated monitors.



What are your opinion on the subject ? How are you doing in your own company ?
I am trying to convince our boss to purchase monitor calibrators, calibrate all the artists monitors(at least), and change the workflow: Do the lighting with calibrated monitors, then tweak it slightly so it is playable (but not perfect) on bad monitors. It look like my agruments are not good enough for him, maybe you will be able to help ?

Thank you.

Replies

  • Clos3d
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    Clos3d polycounter lvl 17
  • ng.aniki
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    ng.aniki polycounter lvl 13
    This is the tool I am trying to convinve my boss to buy, but as I said, our boss don't want to, he wants to use bad monitor as main reference for color and contrast calibrator. His idea is that if it looking good on a really crappy monitor it has to be ok on a well calibrated monitor.
  • Clos3d
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    Clos3d polycounter lvl 17
    If your boss is half serious about it, he should be buying it. In theory, if it look good on a crappy monitor, it might look good on a any display, it might look horrible, it might be too dark, it might too bright.... In fact, it will look different on all display.

    THE RGB, the contrast or wtv might be off on that crappy monitor.
  • glynnsmith
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    glynnsmith polycounter lvl 17
    Your boss sounds clueless :\ Hopefully he isn't leading a large team or I'd start to worry. If it's a small team, buy one calibrator and pass it around. You only need to run it on a monitor once every six months or so, or with some driver/hardware changes that might knock your colour profiles out.

    A monitor colorimeter/calibrator will give you a really good middle ground with which to work, for colour, brightness and contrast. This will help you make sure your work looks passable on the widest range of displays.

    If you're using a crappy monitor/TV, it might be quite desaturated, which means you'll be ramping the colour up on your source. This will have the knock-on effect where any display that's oversaturated will ramp the colours right up and look horrendous. Same with brightness and contrast. It's a minefield.

    The only way he's going to be able to match a monitor calibrator with his nonsense "crappy monitor" method is to buy a load of crappy monitors, and set them all to random colour, brightness and contrast levels. Unfortunately, testing your work on a singular crappy display means you're only really tuning your work for that one crappy display.
  • Kringlan
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    Kringlan polycounter lvl 4
    As far as I know one colorimeter can be used for multiple monitors and you don't have to calibrate the devices every day either. I think the focus should be on keeping consistency throughout the work-environment and follow established standards of output for the end user as well since what Clos3d says an image will look different anyway. A lot of games lets you change the gamma in the settings too.

    Just a tip for poor people:

    My CRT-display is ten years old and the image have turned slightly red. Now, I don't have a colorimeter so what I do instead is trying to eyeball it by displaying a chart with the RGB spectrum and some greyscale in fullscreen while my room is pitch black.

    First I'll turn the internal constrast to full, then I'll bring the brightness down to a point where black is as black as possible while still retaining a consistently linear greyscale without skewing brightness to the best of my ability. Also setting color temperature of two availible to the colder one.

    That's all I can do as far as internal settings go. What remains is to balance gamma in software for indvidual RGB channels by looking at the grey values in the chart and adjust it so mid-grey looks as neutral as possible, which ideally should result in a smaller colorspace but represent true colors better without any color dominating.

    Despite my CRT being kind of broken I love it since the contrast is so good you can't tell if it's turned on in the dark when displaying only black. But still visibly displaying everything which isn't fully black at the same time as it's bright enough.

    I only do this because I'm poor though so I would get a colorimeter if I could.
  • [HP]
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    [HP] polycounter lvl 13
    Just buy a good monitor, and calibrate it using this:
    http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

    If it's a really good monitor, calibrated before hand by the maker, even better.
    Get a monitor with pure 2.2 gamma, like:
    [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/EIZO-61cm-ColorGraphic-CG243WFS-BK-black/dp/B004NXUK3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1336561536&sr=1-1"]EIZO 61cm (24') ColorGraphic CG243WFS-BK black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories[/ame]

    Obviously that's a lot of money (not considering people spend 1000+$ on a Cintiq with HORRIBLE image quality.

    Or you can go for the lower quality but great quality one:
    [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/EIZO-Display-FlexScan-S2402WFS-BK-black/dp/B00405DFCQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336561080&sr=8-1"]EIZO 24' Display FlexScan S2402WFS-BK black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories[/ame]



    I hate monitor calibrators with a passion, I tried dozens, it's all SHIT, and they crash / stop working, after you boot a game, or a game editor, so yeah, sounds pretty useful for us, nawt!
  • glynnsmith
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    glynnsmith polycounter lvl 17
    [HP] wrote: »
    ...
    Nonsense.
    [HP] wrote: »
    If it's a really good monitor, calibrated before hand by the maker, even better.
    +
    [HP] wrote: »
    I hate monitor calibrators with a passion

    Uhm? Come on, man. The difference is between applying the colour profile via hardware and software. You end up with the same image...

    Also, if the boss isn't going to spend money on a calibrator, do you think he's going to pay out for a bunch of far more expensive monitors?
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    I use a Huey Pro and think it's awesome.
    Yes, Helder is correct that sometimes the calibration gets knocked off by some game engines that use their own colour correction etc., but it is most likely down to the game engine forcing their colour correction rather than an error in the software for the colour calibrator.
    Just eyeballing it isnt very accurate and using a colour calibrator that is factory calibrated, you guarantee that the colours that you are seeing on you monitor are correct by using the same standard for multiple monitors. The calibrator will give you the same results over multiple monitors where 10 people using their own judgement and eyes will not.

    I am so glad that I bought my Huey as both my monitors now match well and the calibration has removed a noticeable blue and green tint that is present on each screen before they were calibrated. It only take about 1 minute to calibrate a monitor too, so you can save a ton of time.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Think of the perfect monitor world as a grid, 0,0 beind perfect, the x axis is for color and the y axis is for contrast. Most monitors are going to spread out evenly around 0,0. If you are working on a monitor thats contrast is too low, and its color is too cool, its going to look off at 0,0 and even more off to someone with a monitor with high contrast and warm colors. If you are working from a calibrated monitor it is not going to look really off to anyone.
  • ng.aniki
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    ng.aniki polycounter lvl 13
    Thank you for all the comments. I have some more arguments now. Anyway, I think I have to insist until we change things.

    Thanks a lot !
  • D4V1DC
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    D4V1DC polycounter lvl 18
    Instead of me making a new thread I will ask my concern here.

    Curious how many trusting and helpful people their are in the world of PolyCount, so I have come to ask a HUGE Favor of the community.

    Here's the situation, I don't know of anyone with a Spyder Calibrator.
    I also can't afford a SPYDER Calibrator at the moment, I've been really wanting to calibrate my monitors cause I am just not comfortable working under these varying color profiles.

    Now the favor is can anyone part temporarily with their SPYDER Calibrator for a short period so that I may calibrate my monitors?

    I know It's a huge shot in the dark but if I don't ask I won't know so I am at least giving It a shot. :poly122:

    Edit:
    I have also already used the sites to configure my colors, but I don't feel comfortable with the results, I also need new monitors but I also can't afford them so this is my last hope.
  • marks
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    marks greentooth
    Unless you're doing quite high level freelance, or in a large production environment, I would seriously question whether you *need* to be using a Spyder.

    The issue has come up several times at my work and basically, almost all of our monitors in the art department are on factory default settings. We are using HP LP2475w monitors on factory default settings (which in fairness seem to be very good) as our benchmark.
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    [HP] wrote: »
    Just buy a good monitor, and calibrate it using this:
    http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

    If it's a really good monitor, calibrated before hand by the maker, even better.
    Get a monitor with pure 2.2 gamma, like:
    EIZO 61cm (24') ColorGraphic CG243WFS-BK black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

    Obviously that's a lot of money (not considering people spend 1000+$ on a Cintiq with HORRIBLE image quality.

    Or you can go for the lower quality but great quality one:
    EIZO 24' Display FlexScan S2402WFS-BK black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories



    I hate monitor calibrators with a passion, I tried dozens, it's all SHIT, and they crash / stop working, after you boot a game, or a game editor, so yeah, sounds pretty useful for us, nawt!



    Generally speaking you cannot accurately calibrate/profile a display by eye. Unless a display is at an extreme level of inaccuracy you will do more harm than good. I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they think monitor deviations are global color casts and contrast adjustments. When these people look at their displays they see something along the lines of "it's too blue" and want to fix that. What they don't necessarily realize is that the characteristics of the monitor are much more complicated. Inaccuracies can exist within specific color and value ranges and those inaccuracies can sit on some very funky curves that require differing amounts of correction for highlights, midtones, and shadows.

    Buying a $1200 eizo and then attempting to calibrate by eye is going to ruin whatever level of accuracy that came from the factory. You also don't need to spend 1200 on a display to get really good color. A much less expensive IPS or PVA display with a hardware colorimeter will get you more accurate color than the eizo with the factory profiles. Furthermore, Eizo 100% intends you to hardware calibrate their displays and they even bundle colorimeters with some of them.

    Also, for the OP. Your boss is extra extra wrong about his approach. Monitors all display color differently and have unique characteristics that aren't easily described as global color shifts. Producing content to "look good" on some awful display is totally throwing out the possibility that it will look correct on anyone's display. If you build your content compensating for a terrible display you will have biased all your color choices to that arbitrary set of characteristics.

    Here is an image I made a while ago that provides a visual explanation of why it is important to produce content on an accurate monitor even if you know the target audience will not be profiling their displays:
    accurate_display.gif
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    I'm of the opinion it's near pointless to be calibrating because consumer screens are so poor today. Most TVs/720p panels crop 16 levels off either end of all three channels "NTSC safe" crushing the darks and lights beyond all recognition, have a ridiculous blue tint to try and look futuristic, a glossy panel over the top and more often than not some eye-searing firmware saturation boost. I absent-mindedly did some lighting work on my NTSC-safe display which also does some saturation boost and got it looking great then tried it out on another screen and the yellows were brown. Then I tried it on a mobile device and it blew out the saturation so far that some things were solid red.

    If you know exactly what screen your asset will be viewed on, go for it. Otherwise, I'd argue just don't bother. Find the most "neutral" screen you can of your demographic and use that.
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    When I bought my ASUS, I got the Spyder Elite color calibration done on it before they shipped it out to me for about $40 bucks, and the difference between what I had before and what I have now is like night and day. Very, VERY worth it.

    First thing I did was go view the images on my portfolio and change the ones that were grossly saturated due to having a monitor previously that wasn't calibrated...huge difference!
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