9.5.2

122 • CHAPTER 3
CONFIGURATION • 123
The HSV sliders, RGB sliders and text boxes will react to one other in realtime.
The enhanced color table (Color System set to Enhanced Color Table) gives you a quick way to choose
colors and adjust their saturation and brightness. Click on the table and drag to adjust the color. The
sliders — including those for saturation and brightness — will update in realtime. The preview for the
color will also update in realtime. To open the computer system’s color chooser, click the preview.
If you click the triangle button below the preview, you’ll see the following menu appear:
The top two parts of the menu allow you to temporarily use a different color chooser to the one chosen
in the preferences. The next time you restart CINEMA 4D, the color chooser will revert to the preset.
Color System
You can choose between the RGB model and the HSV model. You can also choose whether the values
should be specied as a percentage, in steps ranging from 0 to 255 or in steps ranging from 0 to
65535. A good choice of colors is essential for consistent photorealistic results. Photorealism is often
a yardstick for programs such as CINEMA 4D.
The human eye can see several hundred thousand colors in the spectral range between 400 nm (blue)
and 700 nm (red). This color sensitivity is the result of many thousands of receptors on the retina. Not
all of these are equally sensitive, and not all are sensitive to the same range of wavelengths. Some of
the receptors are particularly sensitive within the blue range at about 440 nm; others are far more
sensitive in other ranges; while yet others are particularly receptive in the green range at about 540
to 580 nm.
The eye therefore has three different types of receptors for the primary colors of red, green and
blue. The spectral sensitivity and overlapping of the sensitive ranges make characterization of colors
extremely difcult (see Figure 1).
The color that the human eye perceives as white does not contain equal parts of red, green and blue
light — this would be called chromatic — but must, in accordance with the overlapping sensitivity
ranges, be made up of varying proportions of these colors. Only then does the eye see white. This is
what we call achromatic light.