How to get better VRay renders (aka working in linear space)

[tricky]

What monitor calibrator have you gone for?

I've just got the Monaco Optix XR Pro which looks a bit like a mouse that you stick to your screen. I am now struggling with this!! We each have two monitors running from our machines, and I have never been able to get even my two monitors looking the same (from the same darn PC) let alone all the monitors in the office! This thing was going to be my saviour.

However, after creating profiles just for my own two monitors (CRTs) and then letting the software create a profile they can both match, they still look way different. I am obviously doing something wrong somewhere - Adobe Gamma is definately not running, so it must be something somewhere else.

Any ideas?

[rpc212]

I always thought that with a two monitor system you only calibrate one monitor and use that one calibrated monitor to look at output. Something to do with Windows not supporting multimonitor calibration or something . . . I read this somewhere. Now, where is where?

[flipside]

I think this is true, I never succeeded in running adobe gamma for example for both monitors.

[timmatron]

I've got the Spyder2 Pro, and I can calibrate both monitors. One is crt and one is lcd, and after calibrating each of them, they look very very similar. It comes with a profile chooser that will let you assign individual icc profiles to the dual monitors.

[paulison]

My conclusions:


Solution B: Work in 'pseudo' linear space.
To do this, I leave the Max Gamma settings at 2.2 (both Display and Bitmap Input) as in Solution A, and I simply set Vrays colour mapping settings to Gamma Correction with Dark Multiplier set to 1 and Bright Multiplier set to 1/gamma of monitor (which will be set once my hardware callibration thingy arrives), which is about 0.455. Now when I render, the 'linearness' is burned into the image so that I still get more detail in darker areas, but don't need to worry about colour profiles and all that in Photoshop - I treat the rendered output just as I have always done.

So does setting the bright multiplier to 2.2 (1/0.455 is almost 2.2) equate to working in 'pseudo' linear space?

Struggling with this concept but liking the idea of removing all "filler" lights, not geting dark shadows and also setting up materials to look right in the material editor.

I have a 24 inch dell LCD and as stated earlier in this thread, 2.2 gamma is resulting if overexposed previews in the material editor. anyone know how i can work out what to set gamma at for this?

[tricky]

always thought that with a two monitor system you only calibrate one monitor and use that one calibrated monitor to look at output. Something to do with Windows not supporting multimonitor calibration or something . . . I read this somewhere. Now, where is where?

Where? Please? Where did you read this - I really need to sort this out. I've wasted time and money on this. Surely I should be able to match to identical monitors running on one PC from the same FireGL X2 graphics card??? My colleague also has the exact same setup and he can't do it either!

Any ideas?

[flipside]

It comes with a profile chooser that will let you assign individual icc profiles to the dual monitors.

Tricky, I think this is what you need. I don't think that windows can assign 2 different profiles to your monitors by default.

[panthon]

I've got the Spyder2 Pro, and I can calibrate both monitors. One is crt and one is lcd, and after calibrating each of them, they look very very similar. It comes with a profile chooser that will let you assign individual icc profiles to the dual monitors.

We have a spyder2 pro here in our studio too. It works well indeed and lets you calibrate your monitors precisely, assigning, as timmatron said, individual profiles to each monitor. It works equally well in crt´s and lcd´s and it´s definitely a good start point when adopting the linear workflow. By default it will calibrate your monitor to 6500K and 2.2, but you can alter these values if u wish with no problem. Software is intuitive and device is robust. No complaints here.

[tricky]

So do you have two monitors connected to one graphics card, and they can still be calibrated properly? If so, which graphics card do you have?

[timmatron]

I have a quadro fx 1100, but really, any video card with dual outputs should do the trick Tricky. Hey, didn't I meet you and Dan in LA last year? It's hard to tell by only the upper half of your face!

[panthon]

I have only one graphic card with dual output. I have an ATI fire gl *.*...i don´t really know which model is because im not at the office. But u can calibrate all the monitors on any dual output video card with these kind of neat devices. It will create an individual profile for each monitor.

[Tog]

I have just finished to read (several times in fact) all pages and Linear worflow by Throb. So If I understand correctly:
Our monitors display in gamma 2.2 space (for PC) in this space we don't see the real image, so in order to obtain a linearized image (see the real image) we must compensate this, we adjust the gamma correction in VRay to 1/2.2. In this case we are in linear space and see the correct image.

2.2 * (1/2.2) = 1 = linear space = correct image

Right ? (I hope )

[fewlo]

hi all,

if I were to use a different colour mapping other than the gamma correction, is this defeating the whole purpose of this full thread?

[beestee]

If I understand correctly, we have adjusted our lighting settings where I work to compensate where this workflow would eliminate the need to compensate in the lighting. Even with the settings adjusted, the images do not turn out the way I would like them to. I am going to attempt changing our processes to use this workflow in the near future.

[Dman3d]

A-Ha!

So, any plans to have something to handle the color correction in VRay in the future? I usually use HSV Exp to keep the color straight(er), this is
a departure but appears to work well, when using the color correct plug.