Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
7
Color, Particles,
and Sensory Spaces
Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with deinite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand
different ways.
—Oscar Wilde
7.1 THE IMPACT OF COLOR AND THE POWER OF PARTICLES
Color is like dynamite: It must be handled carefully. If used thoughtfully, color will clarify and reveal your
designs' forms and internal meanings. If used carelessly, it will undermine and collapse the design composi-
tion by diverting the visitor's eye and fracture the underlying harmony of form and pattern. That said, some-
times as a designer, you do want visual pandemonium. If you really want to blow things up, particle systems
will create the resultant dust clouds, as well as rain, snow, ire, hair, fur, and many other “fuzzy” chaos-based
events in a virtual environment [1].
7.2 UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF LIGHT AND COLOR
From the vast expanding sphere of electromagnetic waves emitted by our Sun, there is a narrow band between
the infrared and ultraviolet called the visible spectrum. These wavelengths slip through the “optical window”
in our atmosphere to light Earth. When one of these wavelengths is scattered by the atmosphere, the air
takes on that color. For example, when clean air scatters the blue wavelengths at midday, the sky becomes
blue, and at sunset, the red wavelengths tint the skies pink. Your eyes are sensitive to three ranges of light
wavelengths, each range centering on the red, blue, and green areas of the visible spectrum [2]. Proof that
a trichromatic sensitivity in your eyes (Young-Helmholtz theory) exists is only a recent inding (in 1983 by
Dartnall, Bowmaker, and Mollon), and there are still many questions about how your eyes actually see color,
what part of color vision resides in the brain, and what is in the retina.
7.2.1 d
efining
The
r
ainBoW
and
C
reaTing
The
C
olor
s
Cale
oVer
h
isTory
As human cultures evolve and develop their languages, more color terms are added to their vocabulary.
A primitive culture may only have two color terms, and say that the color is bright/warm or dark/cool.
Eventually, the need arises to be more descriptive, and the culture adds more color terms. The stages of color
term development are thought to be a product of both biological and linguistic inluences [3].
Isaac Newton's scientiic experiments on the refraction of light along with other seventeenth century natu-
ral scientiic theories led to the establishment of red, yellow, and blue as the primary colors in the eighteenth
century. This standard is still around even though it is not applicable to the commercial and digital uses of
color we have today [4]. When additive and subtractive color mixing was reined and standardized, the color
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