LWF for dummies

[3LP]

hi,

Is there any possibilities to implement the fact that the color correct is applied also on the other maps and not only on the diffuse channel ?
And also place a color correct in the maps where there isn't with the color of the reflect.

I don't know if it's easy or not

Anyway, I use your script everyday, it's really awesome

[pg1]

Not sure as I dont script so I dont know if its easy or not either
but if you can tell me why you would use it then I could maybe get someone to look at it.

[3LP]

well, I noticed that my renders where more like what they had to, when I put a color correct for my bump/displace and reflection amount.
your script put a color/correct in the diffuse whatever it's a color or a map.
If that was possible, I would like to have the same process but for the reflection/refraction and other maps that are in the material editor because I think they are also gamma changed. So they would have to be gamma corrected with the color correct plug-in.

Hops you understand what I would like to say,
Thanks a lot for your interest to help other and to share your scripts

[pg1]

As far as I understand LWF (mostly from reading threads posted on this forum) gamma correcting your reflections would not seem to be the regular method of LWF.Someone correct me if I'm wrong this.
I would be interested to know how many people are also doing this as I am not sure of the advantages of this technique. If there is enough of an interest in this and if it provides a better result then I could try and convince the powers that be to update the script
but would have to be able to show them why they should spend the time doing it.

There is another issue in that there is a memory overhead to having to load all these CC maps in and out at render time and if you are working on particularly large scenes with lots of materials you will notice that autogamma starts to slow down your preview renders and will get slower if you triple (in reflection and displacement) the amount of CC maps

As for adding a colour correct to the bump and displacement I'm not sure how gamma correction would help greyscale images either. I usually choose my bump by eye and doing a few test renders until happy and cant think why gamma correction would make that process easier.

Unless you are trying to match displacement created in a different program
This was mention on zbrushcentral because people were having difficulty reproducing there displacement correctly from zbrush to max.
from what I have remember ages back on the zbrush forum photoshop applies a colour correction to you images in you have colour management turned on, so it affects your grey level on displacement. But taking a displacement generated in zbrush into photoshop which applies an srgb curve and then applying gamma correction in max is counter productive.
Turn off colour management in photoshop would be a much better workflow.

That said the current method of linear data being gamma corrected by your monitor to be darken by using autogamma to be brightened in vray or post production also seems to be a bit of a crazy workflow.

Would be interested to hear from Vlado on this as he mentioned at Sigraph that the newer versions of vray will have a LWF button in the colour mapping panel, so curious to know if vray gamma will also be gamma correcting reflections and bump/displacement aswell as diffuse.

[pg1]

I remember something in Lele's sun and sky tutorial videos talking about darkening his materials and also darkening his reflections.

He wrote a script that puts output maps in diffuse and reflections slots and allows you to adjust the reflection and the diffuse output
The script is call vray physical mat convertor or something like that maybe that would help.
maybe that script would help.

Think its on script spot if not ask Lele for it.

[MikeHampton]

There also seems to be a problem, don't know if it's with the script or with the autogamma plug in, where it seems to turn off the "show map in viewport" option of materials.

Kind of frustrating when you have hundreds of objects set to show the maps in viewport.. then suddenly that's all turned off. And as far as I know.. there's no easy global way to turn them back on except to do it one material at a time. But then to only have the script/plugin turn them back off again.

I looked for a script to globally turn on "show map in viewport" of materials and couldn't find anything that's been updated since max version 4-5ish.

[pg1]

hey mike
I never had this problem using autogamma and have used it on every project for the past year.
Anyone else have this issue?

I have also looked for a scripted that would show maps in viewport for the whole scene as this would be very useful but never found one so if you do find one let me know.

[JeffG2]

Any thoughts about updating it to use 2009's built in color correct node?

Another neat modification would be the option to run it on a selected shader or object.

Still a fantastic plugin! Thanks so much!!! I use it hourly.

[dbuchhofer]

Just started playing with this, and noticed one thing that may be unwanted.. If you have a map in the diffuse channel, and it is unchekced, when the autogama places that in the color correct, it enbles the map, instead of using the color.

fair enough, i just have a tendency to place the displacement map in the material for easy show in viewport purposes, but leave it off, and use the displacement from a vraydisplacementmod instead.. the script enables the displacement

Otherwise, thanks for sharing mate! and its much faster than i had imagined it would be!

[pg1]

Hey JeffG2
will update it when we move to 2009 which might happen someday

Applying it to a single object or shader seems like it would be a little bit pointless as its purpose is to save time applying CCs to the whole scene i.e. multiple objects. If you need a CC on an individual object just put one on by hand.

Autogamma applies a colour correct called AutoGammaColorCorrect at render time. If you want you can apply your own colour correct and do what ever you like just as long as you dont name your colour correct AutoGammaColorCorrect there is no issue.

Hey dbuchhofer

"Just started playing with this, and noticed one thing that may be unwanted.."

No this function is definately wanted. We added this function after arguing about it for a bit as a lot of the lads here were doing the same thing i.e. map in diffuse slot and then unticking it. In the end we decided if you dont want to use a map, remove the map.

As for displacement in viewport just tested this and it works
If you want to view you displacement in viewport just put it in any other slot except the diffuse slot, leave the slot unticked and enable the map in viewport. The script will only ticks the diffuse slot

3LP
Not see any more requests for putting colour corrections on reflections bump and displacement so probably wont be updating the script for those options. Did you find Leles vray physical mat convertor?

MikeHampton
Asked the lads at work about the map in viewport issue and no one here has the same problem and I cant recreate it in a test scene so not really sure what the issue is. I imagine its really annoying. Our script guy Dave isnt here at the moment will ask him when he comes back next week maybe he can help.

[JeffG2]

Applying it to a single object or shader seems like it would be a little bit pointless as its purpose is to save time applying CCs to the whole scene i.e. multiple objects. If you need a CC on an individual object just put one on by hand.

Actually, what I am running into is issues with bringing in imported or merged geometry (with complex shaders) later in the workflow.

[pg1]

I dont ever apply CC s into my scene I just set autogamma to on as soon as I start a project and never come back to it again.

If I import geometry which I do constantly (using copy and paste script from scriptspot which I couldnt work without these days) I have no problems. Autogamma applies a CC to every object at render time and removes them after. So none of my materials have a CC map when I view them in the material editor or when I am working in my scene.


So if I import new geometry this also wont have a CC map, until I hit render at which point autogamma adds a colour to everything (including new geometry/shaders) renders the image and then removes the CC.


we added several options to autogamma to allow for various workflow but I rarely use any of the other options, just turn it on at the start and then forget about it.

[dbuchhofer]

pg1,
Thanks for the quick reply, I'm running into an issue here using autogamma with DR, the local machine is rendering differently from the DR machines, i have copied the autogamma.gup into the slave machines plugins dir, is this just a case of me doing something wrong?

Edit: well.. It appears I'm dumb, it doesn't load said plugin if you don't restart the dr servers after you copy it around LOL.

[pg1]

glad you worked it out dbuchhofer as I dont use DR at all so wouldnt have been able to help

[pg1]

Hey MikeHampton,



There also seems to be a problem, don't know if it's with the script or with the autogamma plug in, where it seems to turn off the "show map in viewport" option of materials.

Kind of frustrating when you have hundreds of objects set to show the maps in viewport.. then suddenly that's all turned off. And as far as I know.. there's no easy global way to turn them back on except to do it one material at a time. But then to only have the script/plugin turn them back off again.

That problem you had this doesnt fix the problem but
Have you tried going to max menu bar then click view and in the drop down menu there is activate maps in viewport/ deactive maps in viewport