ColorCorrection

A ColorCorrection emitter changes the colours of the whole view for a moment: a white flash, a drain to grey, a tint of firelight. It is made by transforming a ColorCorrectionEffect. Each emit makes one temporary duplicate of the effect, and four rows shape it over its life.

What it makes possible:

A white flash on impact. Lifetime 0.2, a Brightness graph from 0.5 to 0, fired by a projectile’s On Hit event.
A flash with an explosion. Emit 1, Lifetime 0.2, the same Brightness graph, in the Folder that holds the explosion.
A drain to grey that holds. Mode Animate, Loop off, a Saturation graph from 0 to -1, Linger 2. The view stays grey for two seconds.
A flash tinted like firelight. A TintColor gradient from orange to white.

Exercise 11 builds the flash and adds it to an explosion.

A ColorCorrection emitter is fired, combined and nested as a Blur emitter is. The Blur page describes that shared behaviour in full. This page gives the rows.

At a glance


Made from	A ColorCorrectionEffect
One particle is	One colour correction
Emit count starts at	1
Modes	Emit and Animate
Sections	Emission, Appearance, Events, Advanced
Not present	Spawn, Motion and Link. A colour correction has no place in the world.

The Emit count starts at 1. A new ColorCorrection emitter plays once at the first press of the Emit button.

Transform

Transform switches the original ColorCorrectionEffect off. It keeps the effect’s Brightness, Contrast and Saturation as level graphs, and its TintColor as one colour.

The original stays off. Each emit makes a duplicate, switches it on, and removes it when its life ends. See What an emit does.

The effect does not need to be in Lighting. It can stay in a Folder with the other layers of its effect. See A screen effect outside Lighting.

Emission

Row	Kind	Starts at	Unit	What it does
Mode	List	`Emit`		Emit or Animate. See Emit against Animate.
Loop	Switch	Off		Shown in Animate mode. Repeats the cycle until switched off. Switching it on starts a cycle at once.
Enabled	Switch	Off		Shown in Emit mode. Makes colour corrections at the Rate until switched off.
Rate	Number	10	Per second	How many colour corrections are made each second while Enabled is on, or during a Duration.
Lifetime	Two numbers	1	Seconds	How long each colour correction lasts. Each picks a value between the two.
Linger	Number	0	Seconds	After its life ends, the colour correction stays at its last values for this long.
Timescale	Graph	1		The speed of the colour correction’s own clock.

The Rate row stays on show in Animate mode. Animate mode does not use it.

Emission and the HUD describes the shared rows in full.

Appearance

Row	Kind	Starts at	What it does
Brightness	Graph	The effect’s own Brightness	The shift in brightness, over the life of the colour correction.
Contrast	Graph	The effect’s own Contrast	The shift in contrast, over the life of the colour correction.
Saturation	Graph	The effect’s own Saturation	The shift in saturation, over the life of the colour correction.
TintColor	Colour	The effect’s own TintColor	The tint. Drawn as a gradient, it changes over the life of the colour correction.

Brightness, Contrast and Saturation take values below 0 as well as above it. At 0 a row changes nothing. A Brightness of 0.5 brightens the whole view. A Saturation of -1 leaves the view grey.

The box of a graph row takes one number, or two numbers as lo, hi. Two numbers give each colour correction one value between them for its whole life. The ⋯ button opens the graph editor.

The TintColor row has a swatch, a box and a ⋯ button. The box takes one colour as R, G, B. The ⋯ button opens the colour editor, where the tint is drawn as a gradient. A gradient has no random spread.

The four rows are read in steps, Anim. Steps times over one Lifetime. The first value of each row is set before the colour correction is switched on.

A flash must end where the view began. Take a Brightness graph from 0.5 to 0 and a Lifetime of 0.2 seconds. The view is brightened at the start and normal a fifth of a second later.

Events

The Events section holds On Emit, On Death and On Destruction. There is no On Hit. See Events.

Advanced

Row	Kind	Starts at	What it does
Anim. Steps	Number	100	How many times the four rows are read over one Lifetime. A value of 0 or less is run as 100.
Emit Into	Instance, picked with `*`	None	Where the duplicate is placed. See Where the screen effect is shown.

Advanced describes these rows in full.

Shared with Blur

Subject	On the Blur page
Where the colour correction is placed, and who sees it	Where the screen effect is shown
How several colour corrections combine	Several at once
One colour correction in Animate mode, and Loop	Emit against Animate
A ColorCorrection emitter inside another emitter, or fired by an event	Nesting and events

With the tools

Tool	Effect on a ColorCorrection emitter
Size	None.
Time	Multiplies Rate and divides Lifetime.

Size and Time describes both tools.

Limits

No Spawn rows, no Motion rows and no Link.
In a game, one player sees the colour correction: the one whose machine fires it.
A graph that does not end at 0 leaves the view changed until the duplicate is removed. A Linger above 0 holds that last look.
Each emitted colour correction counts as one particle toward the Particle Cap.