Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
3. Turn the walls back to white and try the color progression on the loor. How does that affect your
sense of gravity? What color on the loor makes you feel more “grounded”? What color makes you
feel a bit weightless? The third panel down of Figure 7.4 shows this effect.
4. Now, try various combinations of your color palette on the ceiling, walls, and loor. You may notice
that when you use the strong red on all the surfaces, the energy of the room maxes out and cancels
out the overall advancement effect, but when you combine it with some yellow surfaces, it becomes
more exciting due to the contrast of the two warm colors. Highly saturated colors will advance and
make the space stimulating, which is good for a nightclub but not as good for a workspace where
people need to focus.
Cross-cultural studies, even interspecies studies (monkeys to humans) have indicated that there were
physiological and psychological responses or color-mood reactions common to all participants [11]. The color
red excites the observer emotionally and physically more than any other color in the spectrum, while viewing
shades of blue and green tend to relax the observer. In Table 7.1, the major physical and psychological effects
for each color are listed in the far left column under the hue.
7.4.2 C
olor
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our
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udgmenT
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enses
Color can powerfully affect your ability to judge space, time, and mass. To see how it affects our sense of
volume and distance, try these changes in your virtual test room. Recolor the walls to a very pale blue, put
a bright green cube in the middle of the loor, and set the sun position to default afternoon. Take a snapshot
to record how this looks and save it to a ile. Now, change the walls to bright saturated red and take another
snapshot. When you compare them, you will probably feel that the red walls are closer in space, and the
volume of the room has diminished. This effect is shown in the bottom panel of Figure 7.4.
Now, try changing the illumination level by changing the sun position in your world (World/Sun Position
in the top tabs) setting to default midnight. Try both the pale blue and red walls again, recording the same
point of view under the low-light/blue-light conditions. You will probably notice that the darker color under
the dimmer/bluer lighting makes the room seem even smaller.
Your estimation of density, mass, and the apparent weight of an object can be greatly affected by its color
[11]. Generally, the darker and more saturated a color is, the heavier the object will appear to be. You can test
this by creating a series of large spheres 2 meters in diameter. Make one a deep blue tone and one a light blue
tint. Which seems heavier, more massive? Now, copy those two spheres and color them with a deep red tone
and a light red (or pink) tint. Compare the deep red to the deep blue sphere. The warmer color will appear
heavier than a cooler color with the same tonal (value and saturation) color base. So, if you want your virtual
machinery builds to have a more realistic sense of weight, make the colors of these components a dark, deeply
warm, saturated color. This sense of apparent weight can be used with ceiling heights and color. A very high
ceiling can carry off a saturated warm color, while a low ceiling painted the same way may seem oppressive.
The color of the walls in a lecture hall, meeting room, or classroom seems to affect how we perceive time.
Conlicting results have come in regarding whether time seems to pass more slowly or quickly in a warm or
cool color room, but in each experiment, a difference has been observed in how time is perceived in rooms
with different colors while the same presentation was made [11]. Perhaps you would like to test this phenom-
enon yourself by creating a color changing lecture room that records the attendance of each visitor during a
given lecture and surveying them about their perceptions on the length of the presentation.
The color of an environment can also affect your perception of the ambient temperature. Studies have
shown that cool colors will make people less tolerant of a cool room where warm colors will help them
tolerate lower temperatures [11]. Sound level is also affected by the color of the environment. We speak of
