Colour Palette Guide - Illuminate Your Design

A quick guide to choosing a colour palette for your 3D Renderings.

What Is a Colour Palette?

Definition.

Have you ever pondered how painters direct the viewer’s attention, express meaning, and capture moods with colour? It’s essential for everyone working visually to comprehend how colour is defined in art.

One of the fundamental components of visual art is colour. Understanding colour relationships enables artists to elicit strong feelings from the viewer, direct them through compositions, and communicate ideas.

This guide covers the fundamentals of colour, from the colour wheel and theory to colour harmonies and meanings. Continue reading to discover how to use colour in your artwork with intention.

Firstly, a colour palette in the digital world refers to the full range of colours displayed on a device screen. When creating any 3D Rendering, our job is to make the images look stunning in every way possible. This is no small task.

A colour scheme is the choice of colours used in the design; the client or the designer can select this before materials are added to the 3D model to create the image style and appeal. These can be selected by using different online tools such as colour-hex.

Likewise, colour schemes can be selected using reference images and mood boards. On the other hand, within product rendering, you may want to draw attention to a button or user interaction using bright colours.

Read how Salesforce studied colour to make a better user experience.

The Basics of Colour Theory

Examples.

Below are a short list of terms and definitions within colour terminology.

Chroma: how pure or intense colour is. Hue: what colour or shade something is. For example, blue or red. Saturation: how strong or weak the colour is. Value: how light or dark colour is. Tone: created by any pure hue with neutral Grey added. Shade: created by any pure hue with black added to it. Tint: created by any pure hue with white added to it.

The Four Main Types of Colour Palettes

Examples.

• Monochromatic

• Analogous

• Complementary

• Triadic

!..A monochromatic colour scheme has all the colours of a single hue including tones, tints and shades. These are the most simple colour schemes to create because they are all taken from the same colour.

Monochromatic palettes can be very boring and are not used much in 3D rendering. The only exception of this would be if the client requested it or we were to create a black and white image.

The primary colour is selected, and the colours from either side of it are on the colour wheel. One colour tends to be a primary or secondary colour, and finally, a tertiary.

For example, red, orange and red-orange. This colour palette typically does a good job of expressing consistency.

They are easy to work with because there is not too much difference in the colours.

The complementary colour scheme consists of opposites of the colour wheel. For example red and green, blue and orange. These colours are great for communicating a sense of balance as they essentially cancel each other out by producing a grey-scale. But when they are placed next to each other create great contrast.

Finally the triadic colour scheme consists of three colours that are at equal points on the colour wheel. For example red, yollow and blue.

What Does Colour Mean?

Definition.

When it comes to rendering, the power of colour is both emotional and practical. On an emotional level, colours can affect how the viewer feels about the image, whether it is a warm or cold feeling, for example.

There have been a number of studies on the relationship between colours. They reveal that 90% of snap judgments made about a product can be based on colour alone.

Red: danger, energy, power, passion Orange: fresh, youthful, joy, enthusiasm, creativity Yellow: optimistic, cheerful, happiness, intellect Green: natural, ambition, growth, freshness, safety Blue: communicative, tranquility, confidence, intelligence, depressed Purple: luxury, ambition, creativity, royalty Black: power, elegance, mystery, sorrow, sophicsticated White: cleanliness, purity, perfection, innocence, minimalism Brown: organic, wholesome, simple Pink: romance, exciting, feminimie, senitemental

Check this quick video out by: Experiments Team.

4 Tools to Help You Pick Your Colour Palette

Examples.

Below are some free tools that will help you decide what colours to use in any artistic endeavour, from Architectural Visualisation to DIY Interior Design.

Colour Hunt.

Colour Hunt is a free online tool that allows people to select colours and add them to a palette, it also lets you share your ideas with others and see what palettes may take your liking. It’s a great way to scroll through a (nearly) endless feed of colour palettes searching for the ones that strikes your fancy.

Adobe Colour Wheel.

Adobe Colour Wheel helps used explore the colour wheel. It gives you the ability to extract colour from any image and apply Harmony Rule, Analogous, monochromatic, Triadic, Complementary, Compound and Custom Shades.

Coolors.

Coolors is a great tool for designers. It also offers an app with Adobe Adds-Ons for Photoshop and Illustrator. These make it a very powerful application that can help you choose your colour scheme. Likewise you can also browse thousands of colour colour palettes from the community.

Paletton.

Paletton is similar to the others but the main difference is that you can use 5 tones. This is a great tool when you have primary colours and want to explore all the additional tones.