what you’re observing here is the difference in colourspace between what you’re used to (RGB), and what UE4 (the engine Automation is made in) uses (sRGB).
the tl;dr of it is: The colour picker uses sRGB colourspace. use an RGB>sRGB converter (there are many online) to convert the values you want to use into the values you need to use, or adjust the Value by V^2.2
the long answer is:
the colour picker uses the following float values(numbers):
- Hue: linear 0-360
- Saturation: linear 0-1
- Value: sRGB (colourspace) 0-1 (rgb (colourspace) to srgb (colourspace) conversion is roughly Value(brightness)^2.2)
- Red/Green/Blue: sRGB 0-1
+ For all values(brightness) (so R,G,B, and V) in the lowest 10% of the sRGB colourspace (on non-metallic surfaces with high rougness) and lerping linearly toward 0%, the specular output of the material is reduced toward zero to fake surfaces (like vantablack) that arent correctly represented by ue4’s microfacet shader. this is required for all those really dark and thick surfaces, like velvet and vantablack, that aren’t normal flat surfaces. the additional physical depth created by these materials reduces their visible brightness significantly, and cannot be represented correctly in UE4 without this additional specular reduction.
the full math for how this happens is as follows:
- - -
eventually, perhaps, we could add additional modes to the colour picker, specifically for clarifying this problem and providing a solution.
the drop-down menu is a drop-down for two reasons, and one of them is the flexibility to add more options.
specifying these current ones as sRGB, and adding two new RGB(colourspace, so one linear RGB and one linear HSV) options should be very easy to do 