Paint Colour Matching

While doing further research on the colours for the Enterprise E I discovered a number of websites that had documented builds.  This was very useful as it should help cut down on my learning curve.  In addition to that benefit one build mentioned that the colours used were referenced from the actual movie model of the Enterprise E!  Hello hello hello…  (http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/misc/enterprise-e.htm)

Of particular interest was a link to a website that seems to keep a visual catalog of a number of the Star Trek ships.( http://employees.csbsju.edu/rsorensen/modelcitizen/trekships/sovereign/index.html)  For the Enterprise E there are specific colours listed.

Only one small problem.  The colours listed are using the Pantone Color Matching System. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone)  Not RGB or in one of the model paint companies colours but some bloody thing called Pantone.

I need to match these Pantone colours to a physical paint.  More research required.

I didn’t have too much luck with google, but I did have a eureka moment.  RGB is the valuation of a colour if you will, so I loaded up my handy colour picker program from  iconico.com called ColorPic and captured all of the RGB values for the colours listed.  I needed to use the actual Pantone website to get a clear RGB though.  The resource page with the Pantone colours shown had problems with the images.  They were grainy when viewed through ColorPic which means the RGB was inconsistent across the image.

Here is a snapshot of the Pantone chart from http://employees.csbsju.edu/rsorensen/modelcitizen/trekships/sovereign/index.html:

My RGB values for the above chart were:

Cool Gray 1:E0E1DD
Cool Gray 2:D5D6D2
Cool Gray 3:C9CAC8
Cool Gray 4:BCBDBC
Warm Gray 9:82786F
Warm Gray10:766A62
Warm Gray11:675C53
Cool Gray 10:616365
131:CE8E00
416:83847A

Here is the text from  http://employees.csbsju.edu/rsorensen/modelcitizen/trekships/sovereign/index.html just for reference.

Ship Part	Pantone
Overall Base Hull Color:	Cool Gray 2U (U=”uncoated;” somewhat matte)
Contrasting Hull Panels:	Cool Gray 3U
Occasional Plates:	Cool Gray 1U and 4U
Note: The Upper Saucer is mostly CG2U outboard of the registry number, and mostly CG3U inboard number. This is due to the relative amount of masking of the plating; more notes coming about this. For the moment, don’t go buying tons of masking film or tape.
Dark Gray Areas:	Warm Gray 11U
Contrasting Lines/Panels:	Warm Gray 9-10U
Lifeboat Surrounds, Sensors:	Cool Gray 10U
RCS Quads:	131U plus flat black nozzles
Phaser Strips:	416U
Deflector Dish:	Bronzish/Copper (better notes soon)
Nacelle Side Lobes:	Flat Black and primer gray
Very Dark Pylon Vents:	Flat Black with blue-gray trim
Nacelle Nose Accent:	Cool Gray 10U
That’s it for the moment. Most of the *truly* dark details, and there aren’t many of them, are jet black. A few more are on the underside, and I’ll get to them soon. The medium dark stuff is the two levels of dark gray, and the lighter stuff is the two or so levels of light gray. As I say, ILM got a lot of other levels by misting the smallish panels, but overall, we’re looking at a fairly limited palette.

So that was one step in the right direction.  Now I just needed to find a matrix of paint companies and there respective products, cross referenced with RGB values.

Good luck right?  Ha!  The internet, once again, delivers.  Some dedicated poor soul actually did just that.

It’s called, and you won’t get an argument from me, “The Ultimate Model Paint Conversion Chart” (http://www.paint4models.com/paintchart/paintconversionchart.html#app=cb3e&e5a0-selectedIndex=0).

I couldn’t believe it.

I’ve yet to use it to see if there are any direct matches for the RGB values to a specific paint, but what a find!

Here’s a shot of the two tools in action.