linear workflow 'reloaded' now online

[Gijs]

Do you apply colorcorrect to your reflect slot (falloff maps in particular) as well?

I don't think that should be done.

[Gijs]

I can understand that the aa is much better in the second image, because the gamma is already calculated in the image while rendering, creating lighter areas and therefore the sampler can identify the sharp lines and AA them good. In image 1, the sampler doesn't identify these lines in the dark areas because without the gamma correction these regions are very dark.

this is true, all color mapping modes affect qmc sampler to create the best possible output. When you use linear color mapping(and keep all otehr settings the same) you will notice your images have more noise, but also the rendering time goes down.

But as you see, you need much higher qmc sampler settings if you don't use the gamma color mapping, resulting in higher rendertimes.

Right, but as mentioned, using gamma correct color mapping also increases rendering time.

Or is the bad AA a result of doing the gamma=2.2 conversion with the max vfb instead of doing it in photoshop on a 16bit image?

I guess I'm a bit confused here. Can anyone clear this out for me?

The bad AA is not due to conversion.
What you can also do is use gamma correct color mapping and check RealRGB, then save the realRGB as 16bit out to photoshop and assign it a linear color space, like in the diagram shown in my article.

[Gijs]

The terminolgy in the tutorial is confusing but I think I have some of it sorted out.

linear gamma = gamma 1

gamma correction = gamma 2.2

linear workflow =
1.) calibrate monitor to gamma 2.2 and 6500k
2.) Set 3dsmax global gamma correction to 2.2 in display and input
3.) Adjust diffuse colors or use "color correction plugin"
4.) Bitmap gamma will default to global settings but can be changed in the bitmap loader

Correct?

not all is correct

linear gamma = gamma 1

gamma correction = gamma x, where x is the gamma that has been chosen to calibrate your monitor to

ad1: I advise to use a 2.2 gamma to calibrate to, because this is the most commonly used. you can also calibrate your whole system to gamma 1, but this gives a very unpleasant internet experience 6500K is a commonly used whitepoint. in prepress, you will often see lower values like 5500K and as Chris mentioned, 5900 for Video

ad2: only set input to 2.2 when using your existing textures. if you happen to paint new textures, and you paint them in linear space, you should of course not use a 2.2 input gamma. you can also define the input gamma on a per texture basis in the bitmap load dialog

ad3: again, this is basicly for converting old scenes. In priciple you won't need the plugin when building your materials from scratch.

And the hdrshop (linear) hdri darkness and saturation problem when working in non linear workflow seems to be helped by changing the rgb offset to 0.25 or so. But I fear that doing this compromises the hdri's range. (black is no longer black, at least in the mat editor)

I think you don't need to do these kind of things, because hdri is already linear.

[jujubee]

ad3: again, this is basicly for converting old scenes. In priciple you won't need the plugin when building your materials from scratch.

...Unless you are targeting a specific diffuse color swatch RGB value (like matching a specific paint in an interior) - then you need to run it through the colorcorrect 2.2 adjustment.

[jujubee]

As a side-note - not sure if anyone else has played with and the new vray sky/sun system. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but it seems to do some strange things to the sky colors...

[rpc212]

By "it" you mean the color correct plugin does weird things to the sky color?

[jujubee]

Sorry - long week. 'It' meaning Linear Workflow. I tried it within Colorcorrect and the colors seemed strange. Could just be my settings.

[jujubee]

Would/could anyone be kind enough to create a scene script for converting Vraymtls with empty diffuse slots to ColorCorrect version with 2.2 gamma applied? It would also have to ignore vraymtls with bitmaps in the diffuse as this is automatically converted by Max (assuming you have the settings applied in Max gamma preferences.)

[flipside]

I have a new question. Regarding the look of the gradient ramp in the color picker of max. I calibrated my monitor to gamma 2.2 and set max display gamma to 2.2.

But now, when creating materials, I have very little room in the dark grey area to choose from. To show what I mean, I'm gonna use some of throbs images from his tutorial (hop that's allright):

image1:


image2:


image3:




Please look at the greyscales. My color picker grayscale looks like the one in image3. As you see, almost no dark range. Without any of the gamma display changes, the greyscale looks like the one in image 1.

Should my greyscale in the color picker look like the one in image 3??? That's the only thing I'm still confused about. It is annoying because I can't fine tune dark materials with this greyscale, or even more annoying, reflection strength.

Just wanna know if I'm still doing something wrong or not.

Thanks,

wouter

[Gijs]

I was just checking this out and it definately should not look like image 3, it should look more like image 1.
Monitor calibration is very important, especially when you are on LCD. In that case, there will in fact only be one good solution: hardware calibration, because of the shifting gamma with viewing angle.
The only thing I can think of is that you did not calibrate your monitor well.

[flipside]

I was talking to jujubee about this, and it seems that in higher max versions there is an option in the gamma preferences that the display gamma should not affect color selectors.

this is max8:




This is max5:



look at the max 8 selector. The vertical greyscale differs from the horizontal one, because of the general gamma settings.

In the max 5, both grayscales look the same and comparable to image 3 of my previous post. The max 8 horizontal grayscale also looks very similar.

If I set my gamma to 1.0, then my grayscales look like the vertical one in max 8 image.

If you set display gamma from 1.0 to 2.2, then these grayscales must change no??

[Gijs]

O.K., it seems the images you posted from Rob confused me a bit. The max 5 picture you are showing looks quite O.K. You can see in the max 8 color selector, the HSV block is unaffected by unchecking affect material selectors. I don't know if this is meant to be so, but it rather seems a bug to me.

In the vertical bar of the max 8 selector you can see though that in the black range, you have a large area where you can hardly see any differences. In the gamma corrected version, this are more gradually changes from grey to black.

All in all I am not sure why you say you have a difficult time choosing the right reflection color, because it should be easier this way to select a (visually) unique gray.

Having said this, it could still be that you see something completely different than I am seeing, maybe it wise to look at these scales on a CRT and see if they are similar.

[flipside]

It think it has more to do with how much I got used to the 'old' grayscale. You had a very large dark area there, so fine tuning in this area was really accurate. But in the old one, the light tones were harder because the range was smaller there. Now it's the other way around, the darkest tones have a smaller range and the light tones have a larger range.

So never mind my comment, main thing is I thought that I still did something wrong because I thought my grayscale looked wrong.

[Gijs]

well, imo, you now have a larger range in the dark area, because in the old style, everything below 40 was looking practically black.

[rfellers]

I've noticed the same issue with the grayscale slider. I've calibrated my monitor for 2.2 gamma using Gretagmacbeth Eye-One and set the Max properties for 2.2 gamma. My grayscales look like flipside's image3. The biggest annoyance is that the 50% grey looks way too light. I am using an LCD display, but it seems to me I should not be that far off.

Ryan