CompuServe Messages

Creating a custom color palette is something of an art. If your final target for this animation is .FLC, then you will be limited to one single color palette for the entire affair. If you are going down to tape with the final creation, then the problem is much reduced, if not totally done away with. To have a decent looking .FLC animation involving a lot of different pieces it is often necessary to limit the actual colors involved to just a few, so that various shades of each color can also be included. The cuvette is quite interesting; as the opacity map moves up it, a number of grey shades are needed for it to look realistic (I experimented with a color pallete a bit). But not all 256 by any means. Probably 25 or so shades of grey would be enough to be convincing. But there will be some banding, all the same. If you are wanting to use a lot of colors for the different actors in your film, then I would recommend that you try to get this down to tape for the finished piece. That could be as simple as using Video Post to compostite several .FLC's out to tape. This way, each actor could have his own 256 color map without interfering with any of the others. Or, you could render the entire thing out to TARGA files and then put them out to tape: that would result in the best overall imaging.