You’re sort of making the agrument for scale effect. The distance and difraction of light causes the the star to appear dimmer (essentially washed out). Put another way, the light isn’t piped directly into your eye from the source but spreads out over the immense distance.
The objects we are modeling are not emiting their own light, but reflecting light and perceived by our eyes. Over that distance, via difraction, moisture in the air, dust, etc., the light spreads out and washes out the color. That’s why a plane high in the sky or a ship on the horizon doesn’t appear black but a hazy gray. Obviously, these are extreme examples, sort of like the star, but are useful to demonstrate the scale effect philosophy.
Here’s my own take: I don’t consider scale effect when painting my models. For instance, like this morning, as long as it’s not a super humid day, if I go look at my car (doing so right now), I can’t tell much difference in color if I’m standing 1 foot away, 25 feet away, or 43 feet away (estimates as I move back). It pretty much looks the same. The caveat: To my eye. But maybe to you or someone else it does look different. Maybe you perceive desaturation of color and you want to model that effect. More power to you! But as I pointed out in the initial post, scale effect, if you model it, will be different depending on where you are in the world–Phoenix, Arizona, is going to be very different from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Humidity and particulates in the air very drastically from one local to another, and therefore your perception of this effect would be different based on it.
But hey, it’s scale modeling–an art–and there are no rules!
Oh! And here’s a discussion about scale effect on this forum from back in 2003: Color Scale Effect
You have that backwards. Look at a mountain range, or a series of hills, and you’ll see that the further away from you, the lighter the colors, or perhaps more precisely, the more washed-out or faded. The light coming from farther away is subject to more scattering in the atmosphere.
Exactly. Lighter is a misnomer. The colors become desaturated and washed-out. Which bring’s up an interesting thought: Instead of using white or light gray to “desaturate” the color, we should be considering the color wheel and using complementary colors for the job. I jest!
I would strongly agree with this, but I need to find my bulletproof vest first. Mostly I feel this way about panel lines, which should absolutely not be so dark I can tell they are on the model from across the room!
I’m a little the opposite here, but also agree. I like to do the research to find the historically accurate “exact” paint match, but I will lighten it up a little to indicate wear or fading or…perhaps some unintentional scale color effect.
Oh, Ghu, don’t bring this up - I spend forever researching color blending and mixing and this would just ruin any spare time I have to model…
Ok, in addition to scale effect, lets make the matter more complex. Paints fade with sunlight, and paint may weather in an uneven way. This is weathering. Do you want your plane to look like you painted a wall? Second grenade tossed.
Tim, an old man now, eases back in a rocking chair sitting on a dilapidated deck charred in spots, the only surviving construction of a house that’s burned down many years ago. “I remember when this was a nice place. A happy place. Before the troubles. Before … @tobyrudy10.”
As an armour modeller I’m not really looking for a finish that’ll sparkle like a diamond, so the vehicles will always be finished with a flat clear coat. So far this has almost always had the effect of desaturating underlying colour
Could it therefore be argued that this process ends up providing a modest scale effect at the end of your project rather than planning for It by lightening your base coats? Further, if you do lighten your base coats, does the act of applying a flat clear coat exacerbate your scale effect and wash the colours out more than it should?
