Standard
In HueForge, there are several Luminance methods for you to choose from in order to create the desired 3D mesh and make your pictures come to life. Standard mode is the most basic of these methods, and a great place to start when you're first starting off in HueForge. This mode tells HueForge to look at your imported image's Luminance values (the intensity of light emitted from a surface per unit area in a given direction). So what this means in laymans terms is HueForge will look at your photo with a black and white filter. The darkest areas of your image will be the lowest part in the mesh and the lighter areas will be the tallest part of your mesh. You can actually see this if you go to your "Model Geometry" box and click the "Image Format" drop down. By default its color, but once you change it to luminance, it will show you how HueForge is looking at the image. Standard is great for projects with not a lot of colors, and simple blending.
Now that we have a basic understanding of how Standard works, where do you start? If you notice, there are 4 color sliders already on the bottom left. Black, dark gray, light gray, and white. These 4 colors help make up a great starting point for a grayscale print. As a new user, I'd highly suggest starting here. Bring in any image that you want to make, and just see how it looks with these default colors. As I said before, you can click on the "image format" drop down to see how HueForge is viewing your picture. Go ahead and change this to luminance and try to match up your project on the left, with the image on the right by bringing those 4 sliders up and down. To increase or decrease the sliders height, you can use your mouses scroll wheel, arrow keys, or simply click on the slider and drag. To turn a slider off, click on the green box below the slider. The number in this green box is your layer number.
I want to briefly touch on TD (transmission distance). If you look above the slider you'll see a number, this is your TD value. This is how we measure the opacity of your filaments, and communicate that to HueForge. 1-3 is opaque, 4-7 is versatile, 8+ is pretty transparent. With that in mind, we have 4 colors in the low td range, meaning we're not going to get a lot of blending. In the future, as you add your own filaments to the filament library, youll be able to just use 2 filaments to do all of your blending in grayscale. A high TD white, and a low TD black.
Getting comfortable with the sliders and how its adjusting the colors of your mesh is very important. In standard mode, the mesh is made when you bring in your image. All you're doing is adjusting where these colors go on that mesh, you're not actively adjusting the mesh, just how your colors are blending on it. We can see this by checking the "wireframe" box at the top right and zooming in on the project. To zoom in on your project view, you just scroll wheel on the project. Once you're zoomed in try adjusting color sliders. You'll be able to see the colors move up and down in your mesh.
- If your image is very detailed like a photo, you will need to change your layer height from a 0.08 to a 0.04 in the "general options and operations" box. Most 0.4 nozzles can handle this low layer height, just make sure you check out our printer settings article on the wiki to help adjust your print settings*
Now that we've played around with some sliders and grayscale, and were starting to get comfortable with the UI. There are more presets than just the default grayscale we see. In the filament library box, you'll see a drop down box with the word "default" in it. This is where all of your presets will live, HueForge has some already available for you to play with. So go ahead and click on the "fire" preset. I think grayscale helps wrap your head around the general concepts of HueForge, but fire color schemes help people understand the color blending aspect of HueForge. If you've ever played with paint, you know that when you mix red and yellow, you'll make orange. In the "fire" preset, there's an orange filament slider, you can actually turn this off and make orange with just your red and yellow filament by adjusting the sliders. Try this with your image. When I started HueForge, I started with fire themed images and worked my way into "Ice" colored images. It was the easiest transition for me to wrap my head around how to start filament painting. Have you noticed in these presets, black is always your lowest slider and white is your highest? This is how you'll almost always set up your HueForges. You'll want to start with your darkest filaments and work your way to your lightest, at least in standard.
Generally speaking, standard is a great tool to make simple projects that you want to add your own artistic touch to with only a few filaments. You can get really great results without having to use much effort. There are better modes for more color accurate projects, but this mode is a simple "ole reliable". It's not overly complicated to understand and is a great starting point for everyone to get a general understanding of HueForge. If you need more help, check out the articles on the TD1 and Color Aware.