Color grading & Polishing

Once I’m happy with the lighting, I move over to color grading and polishing. I adjusted some of the Base Colors to push them more in line with a “vintage” green/orange color palette too. During early color grading explorations, I tend to grade in DaVinci Resolve because of the control and scopes, but I eventually recreate the grade directly in the engine to keep it HDR-ready. Unreal lacks some of the tools available in Resolve, but you can achieve a near identical result with what Epic has provided thus far.

Depending on the look, you can usually get most of the way there with the Global controls, then fine tune the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights with their respective controls. Highlights and Shadows will have a threshold value that acts as the range of what is considered a highlight or shadow, and anything in between those two will then be considered mid-tones.

To explain my color grading a little easier, here is a screenshot of my settings. It’s worth pointing out that I avoid adjusting the tone mapper. Combined with color grading, it can get very messy to manage. It’s better to consider your tone mapper as your “film stock,” and only modify it if you want to change the overall look and not on a per shot basis. I also try to work in stages and as simple as possible. Instead of jumping around between the different controls, I go from Global to Shadows, to Midtones, to Highlights (or whatever I know is the most effective for my grade) and only use what I need. If I can achieve the look I want with one or two sliders, compared to 5 or 6 with 10% influence, I’d rather do that because it’s cleaner, easier to control, and easier to revisit later on without being completely lost.