Mood Machine - A professional color grading toolkit for Unity [50% off!]

Color grading is the process of altering and enhancing the colors of an image. It's being used in film industry for many decades now as one of the primary ways to set the tone of the shot and evoke emotions in the viewer. It also slowly starts to appear in recent games, but sadly just as a sort of "beautifier", instead of as a part of the storytelling.

I see two reasons why the game industry does not see the potential in color grading. The first is that many developers don't even know such a thing exists or think that it takes a professional colorist to grade an image. While it's true that there are people making a living off of it, it's such an easy concept to get a grasp of that any artist can dish out some great looks within a few hours.

I've decided to fix the second reason - no game engine has a color grader as a part of its editor. All you can see are those tools that let you export a screenshot with a lookup table in it, grade it in an external tool and load it back. Not only it's clumsy and time consuming, but what most people do is say: "Oh cool, I'll grade it in Photoshop!" A bad idea. That's NOT a color grading tool in the slightest. It's missing so many features common in professional color graders that it's actually a common practice to import premade lookup textures into Photoshop to do the grading! How ironic...



So, without further babble, meet Mood Machine, a fully-featured color grading toolkit for Unity. It provides everything you will need to set the tone and feel of your game directly inside the editor, where you can see the changes in real time. A wide range of carefully crafted tools fulfills the needs of both beginners and experienced colorists. Use common color corrections like contrast and vibrance or experiment with the more advanced 3-Way color wheels and Qualifiers to give your game the look you've always wanted, but didn't have the time to redo all the textures.

It also allows you to swap presets, the so called 'moods', at runtime, changing the way the whole game looks whenever you feel like. Seting up immersive effects when underwater or when low on hp has never been easier. Breathe life into your game with the endless possibilities of color grading with Mood Machine!


Features:

• No Photoshop or other software required!
• Ultimate control using qualifiers
• Easy to setup without writing a single line of code
• Contains 21 premade color profiles
• It takes just a single fast draw call!
• Dynamic blending with trigger volumes
• Intuitive script interface
• Screen space masks
• Histograms! Everyone loves histograms!
• Source code included!
• Free trial version available!

Easy workflow:

1. Create a Mood asset.
2. Use various grades to set up the look. Example here!
3. Add a MoodMachine image effect to a camera and set your Mood either as a global effect, trigger volume or with a script.

Read more in the manual here.

User Manual

Color Grading Presentation

Asset Store Link

Support E-Mail

Free Trial Version





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About trial version:

• Clicking Window -> Mood Machine Demo opens the Mood editor.
• Automatically applies any effect to the main camera.
• Includes all the features of the Mood editor in the full version, with the exception of screen space masking.
• Not available on build. It's an editor tool only.
• No access to the 21 premade Moods.
• Great for learning purposes and for playing around with the controls.

Requirements:

• Unity Pro, version 4.0 or higher
• Shader Model 3.0 or higher
• Dx11 required to show histograms in editor

Planned features:

• Built-in tonemapping to improve overall performance.
• Gradient ramp tint and several additional grades.

Changelog:

v1.1:

• Added screen space masks
• Added Vignette preset
• Fixed issues with game build

v1.0:

• Initial release

Special thanks goes to Hamish Milne for all the helpful C# tricks and advices.

 

Looks very tweakable. Will there be any script examples included for working with the api that is not zone blending? Like the examples you mention?

 

Is it really? Or do you just include the source code with the package?

--Eric

 

The zone blending covers it quite well, the api is really simple. I can include additional examples, though, if you think it helps.

There are no dll's or external sources, just C# scripts, including the editor code. I dislike Unity's approach of black-boxing every functionality and this is the least I can do to help it.

 

Not heard of Color Grading before so excuse my ignorance but can you explain what the difference is between your fine looking system and say the tone mapping and color correction image effects included with Unity?

 

My bad. I should have explained this a bit more. Tone mapping just converts the HDR result of the rendering to a LDR image that can be displayed on the screen. The best you can do to adjust the look with it is to fiddle with the overall brightness. There are three Unity's color correction image effects, two of which require an external software and are generally a pain to get right and the last one only allows for very simple adjustments. With Mood Machine, you get the whole feature set of a professional color grading software.

Also, have some night:



Or is it day?

 

Yes, but is it actually open source? The term "open source" has a specific meaning that goes beyond "I'm including source code". All of my assets on the store include source code, but none of them are open source. I'm not actually sure the Asset Store license allows open source assets, unless you're releasing it for free.

--Eric

 

Oh, that's a good point, never thought of that. In that case, no, it just includes source code.
Thanks for pointing that out

 

And it has been accepted to the asset store! Take a look: http://u3d.as/content/dolkar/mood-machine/6PP

Hope it serves well

 

It looks good, and I'm surprised by just how good the UI for it appears to be. I'd like to know though, what sets it apart from Amplify Color? It costs $30 less, and appears to support additional things like simple by-location alteration of color, as well as blending and animating. It does appear to require use of Photoshop to utilize though, which seems unwieldy. That also seems though like it would allow more control and variation; Photoshop has a massive range of color grading tools.

If it's meant to be a simpler and easier to use but less powerful tool, it may be a good idea to charge less than them, in order to help target the less experienced range of developers that might favor the ease of use over extra features.
Something like $40.

 

holy sh*t!!! now this is what i always looking for Unity.....Can you show a bigger res of the Interface?? I'm curious about how much and what kind of control do we have....

 

What video are you talking about?
EDIT: Oh, that video! Damn, it must have been taken down... I'll try to find something else.

The screenshots are scaled for the asset store, but I can capture some new ones if you want. It would be great to be able to test this on a better scene than the example demos...

Unlike Amplify Color, this is an actual color grader, with built-in grading tools and underlying algorithms to adjust the colors of the image the same way you would in a color grading software, like DaVinci Resolve. I guarantee Mood Machine is, for color grading purposes, both more powerful and easier to use than Photoshop. From what I've read about Amplify Color, it seems the blending and animating refers to their color volumes, which Mood Machine also supports and you can animate them in the same way, like any other Unity collider. I just didn't want to point out an already present Unity functionality as a feature.
The only thing you can do in Amplify Color that is not implemented here is screen-space per pixel masking, as I thought it's not a feature you need very often. It can always be implemented later in an update

Mood Machine is meant to be a fully featured, in-editor color grading solution with powerful blending capabilities. I haven't seen this functionality in any game engine yet.

You can always read the manual here: http://www.mediafire.com/view/26vz2c88aa8bvfa/MoodMachine_User_Manual.pdf
It shows more screenshots and the description of how each tool affects the image.

I'll post high-res screenshots of both the UI and the grades when I get home.

 

It was just a video explaining color grading in general. I'm not sure if I can record a video myself, I've never done something like this.

As I said, I posted a manual explaining the whole extension and its functionality. I will provide more screenshots later.

 

So you wanted hi-res screenshots and a video.. I can't do the latter, so here's at least a presentation showing the color grading capabilities: http://imgur.com/a/to2Xb

 

Reworked the post a little. I will also start working on a free demo version that will showcase the color grading capabilities. The main limitation is that it will only work in the editor and only for a single Mood. That means you can't use it for your standalone build. It's purpose is just so you can familiarize yourself with the workflow and decide whether you want to roll with it instead of using Photoshop. How would you feel about that?

 

Picked this up yesterday -- seems to work like a charm. I come to the games industry out of film work, so color grading is really familiar to me. Seems to work quickly and smoothly, which is awesome.

Dolkar--you mention above that you were considering adding per-pixel screen space masking to the asset. I could really use that, if its still on your radar.

Thanks for the cool asset!

 

Thanks for your purchase. I hope it serves well!

The free version is still a priority. I'd like to give people not familiar with color grading the opportunity to try it out first. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much time as I'd like to lately. Anyways, it is on my to-do list right after the free version. By the way, do you need it for static, vignette like effects or for applying the grade to certain objects? If the latter, there are more efficient ways to achieve that, though a bit harder to implement.

 

I'm using it over a custom lighting pass for a 2D game, so its more like I need it to apply it to certain regions rather than certain objects. I can't only use the built-in Qualifier because I need to apply the effects to specific bright regions, not all bright regions.

If you have a better way to go about that, I'm all ears!

 

The way I'll implement per-pixel masking is by providing a mask to each mood, which could be either static or set with a script using something like mood.mask. If you need to apply the mood to a certain area that changes every frame, you would have to draw the mask with a shader and feed it to the mood every frame. A faster way to accomplish this would be to grab the mood.lut and sample it directly in your shader.

However, you will be able to do the former hopefully this week as that's the time I will be releasing the free demo together with a new version of Mood Machine, implementing per-pixel masking and a few bug fixes.

 

Released a new version with screen space masks. They can be applied to any mood to filter the effect to certain areas on the screen. Read more in the manual. Also included an example preset and fixed a bug that caused the project to not build correctly.

Expect a free demo version to come up soon!

 

Awesome. Thanks for the great product!

 

OK this peaked my interest. Wishlisted for now, will grab it sooner or later. Here's a major priority of mine:

plz for us hackier types have the relevant functionality in a separate cginc -- I do my own tonemapping, vignette, natural-bloom and various other things in one single post-pass. I have some color-adjustments in the same myOwnPostFx.shader already as well. I'd ultimately include any color-grading into the post shader, Unity's stacked ping-ponged endless-render-textures post-pipeline isn't my cup of tea. So .. I wouldn't wanna copy and paste things around for each update, a relevant cginc would be very appealing if I were to buy into this

 

First off, thank you for your interest! I know, I haven't updated this for a while... not getting as many customers as I thought I would. I think a free version would catch the attention of more people, but I didn't have much time recently, so I put this on a low priority. That does not mean I'm not watching, though

I understand your pain. In a world where bandwidth is limited, every full screen pass counts. However, I don't think a cginc would be a good idea. The shader has four passes, each with several multi_compiles to cut down texture reads as much as possible. Since all it does is sample a few 3d lookup textures and screen space masks and all the other functionality is on the cpu side, it's safe to say it won't be changed that often, if ever. The shader is structured nicely with a CGINCLUDE with all the code on top, so copy-pasting should be a breeze. Then just fill in the defines and multi-compiles to fit your needs.

 

I have been watching mood machine but I am a bit reluctant to lay out the money for it when I haven't seen a working demo. I'm not much of an artist so I really need to see what result tweaking with it in the editor has on an image, screenshots don't really cut it for me I must admit.

 

Well, I already made a free version, fully functional, but useable only in the editor, not on build. Turned out Unity does not want that kind of limitations on the packages in the asset store, so they won't publish it. I didn't even bother posting it here. I thought nobody would even notice anyways.

I guess you proved me wrong

Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/download/vgguorwcv96ayt7/MoodMachineDemo.unitypackage
Import the package, run the game and click Window -> Mood Machine Demo to open the editor. The changes only persist until you close the window, but you have access to all the features of the mood editor, except screen space masking.

I hope it gives you an idea about the product.

 

Great, thanks. I've downloaded the package and will check it out tomorrow.

 

Tested it on a terrain scene. Very impressive, it will definitely save a great deal of time, but more importantly each game can have an individual look and not an included preset. I'll get a copy as soon as I can. Is there a reason there is no webplayer demo online? Within 2 minutes of messing about with the demo version you sent I was convinced Mood machine is a must have, but I had to see it in action, how easy it is to use and how tweakable it is.

 

I'm glad you like it!

I was thinking about a webplayer demo, but it would be very hard to port a user interface this complex to the runtime Unity GUI. It behaves and looks differently from the editor one. All I could show there are the presets, which are not really the main selling point anyways.

 

It is a good asset. I like the fact it is in Unity but possibly one of the reasons it's not been taken up so quickly is whilst Amplify Color does not work in the editor it is possible to link direct to photoshop and make changes with a screen taken direct from Unity and then import the changes back, so it's a semi-auto workflow. Not as good as Mood machine but not that inconvenient either. An extra $30 can be a lot to ask when budgets are tight. Not saying mood machine is not worth that extra $30 but it does cause one to think carefully about the choice.

 

As I was trying to explain in the first few paragraphs, Photoshop is not really a color grading software. As far as I know, the only two controls it has for this purpose are levels and curves. It is possible to do the job with those, but it requires a good deal of knowledge of the color theory to be able to, for example, add an orange tint to the shadows, compared to simply moving the selector in the shadows wheel control that all professional color grading tools, including Mood Machine, have.
I believe $80 is a very good price compared to the cost of other color grading tools and even Photoshop.

 

I'm not really running down the price, an awful lot of things on the asset store are underpriced. Simply pointing out that people will compare the two and if they don't really understand the difference will opt for the cheaper version if they have photoshop. Just emphasising really why having some kind of web demo, even if only limited would be worth your while. Even if you did a video showing the ease of use of Mood machine and what it does, a lot of developers if they don't put up a webplayer demo do put up a video, you should consider that. It's actually an amazing tool but I'm not certain many developers understand that from the write up possibly it needs demonstrating.

 

I really appreciate your concern, but I'd say the main issue is with advertising. When googling for "unity color grading", I couldn't find it in the first five pages and it's deep down in its category in the asset store.

I'm a programmer. Even the best video I could muster is nowhere near the quality other assets have. I think I might try to make a web demo showcasing the presets, but I don't even have an idea where to host it.

Meh.. I take it just as a hobby. I'm really glad someone has a use for what I do. Makes me feel the time I invested in it wasn't wasted

 

If you talk to other asset vendors, you'll find that a whole lot of them make more in a single day when it's discount-deal-of-the-day than the rest of the month. It's all about psychology of impulse buyers and the marketing push, almost everyone checks the Deal daily.

And the "Schnäppchen" / discount hunger overrides rational thinking. Just coming along your $80 asset, I think "looks cool, I'm gonna wait until the day-before-release of my mega-project for the final touch, not needed during the first 2 years or core development". And of course 97% of projects are abandoned before reaching that day. Whereas if it fits the "buy now, use later" impulse that is triggered by a seemingly big psychological discount, they buy it before they inevitably abandon their project sounds probably nasty to you and you probably feel above "playing such games" but hey, that's how it goes.

If you don't wanna feel like "losing money", up the price to $160, then submit for daily-deals or the next Madness Sale for a 50% discount. Then watch the magic.

I'm a programmer myself so I fully understand that might feel like "too much trouble for what it's worth", but afterwards you'll feel differently and it simply kickstarts exposure, positive reviews and community awareness.

I've seen this with many "qualitatively very very good, but underexposed and not as well-known as they should be assets" before and after their discount-deal. Daikon-Forge, Time-of-Day, CORE Framework, you name it, they've all gone through this.

I mean, no guarantees, but there's no effort involved and nothing to lose assuming that you don't have a lot of daily sales right now

 

I must admit a lot of people don't buy on first release unless there is an early adopter discount. A colour grader really is something that developers put off buying until the end. You should be able to find webspace to put the demo up on easily enough, you've got a website just dump the webplayer there.

 

Now THAT is some marketing stuff. A kind of thinking I apparently lack I know about this sale-of-the-day deal, but didn't want to go for it right after releasing the asset. I'll try it out eventually, though.. thanks for reminding me!

I wouldn't really call an empty tumblr blog a website. It most likely doesn't even support custom javascript code.

 

Webspace is not actually very expensive. I have a fair amount free you're welcome to host your webplayer version there free of charge, except you wouldn't really have control of the site and relying on other people is not the type of thing I like to do myself, but if you feel it might be a temporary solution until you get a website sorted just PM me.

As regards a video on youtube. Quite a few developers that don't like to narrate asset videos simply add text and a highlighted cursor to explain what is going on, such videos are not perfect but they're better than nothing.

 

I appreciate the offer, but as you said, I prefer to host it myself in some way. I'll think about the video, though!

Thanks again for all the support.

 

No problem, I'm getting hold of mood machine now. It's a great plugin but messing about with it definitely sealed the deal for me.

 

Just bought this and it's fantastic. I had been messing about with some of the other image effects to get my color grading done without thinking to check the asset store. A few purchases later I found this and it was exactly what I had been looking for; A pro-level color grader right in unity. Super useful! Thanks!

 

I bought Mood Machine today and it is really awesome! Nice set of tools and the ability to do colour grading inside Unity is a big time-saver. Thanks!

 

I couldn't tell by the trial, but in the paid version can you access the color data in code, and create and set color grading effects dynamically at run-time?

 

Yes, you can choose and arbitrarily blend the color grading presets, aka 'Moods', as well as create new ones at run-time through code. The latter can take noticeable amounts of time, though, if you want to do a lot of operations in a high precision lookup table. Even though it's not documented, it shouldn't be very difficult. You just create a Mood object, instantiate and add one of the Grade subclasses to it and finally update the lookup texture. I'll be happy to help you if you have any problems with it.