V-Ray Adv 3.00.03 - 3ds max 2014 - Setting up Linear Workflow.

[stevejjd]

Hello Chaos Group Community!

Hope you are all doing well.

I need help setting up 3ds max 2014 and Vray 3 so that what I see in the Vray Frame Buffer is the image I send to my client.

Right now there are discrepancies between the two and its bugging the hell out of me.

The image looks beautiful in the frame buffer but ugly in Photoshop (appears slightly Posterized).

The Image looks perfect in After Effects but when I go to Project Setting > Working Space = "sRGB IEC6966-2.1" and check the "Linearize Working Space" it makes the image chrunch and look Posterized.

I have used Photoshop, Nuke and After Effects and every time I try to encode the image with sRGB colorspace the image Posturizes slightly.

Can some very kind people help me out or point me in the right direction in terms of setting up a rendering pipeline where what I see in the Vray frame buffer is the same as what my client sees? am working for a client at the moment and I need to fix this ASAP.

Thanks heaps.

Steve.

[stevejjd]

To answer my own question...

I opened a support ticket with Chaos Group and they have been extremely helpful on the matter. Thank you Svetlozar Draganov from the Technical Support Department.

First of all to set up a Linear Workflow you have to set Color Mapping Type to Linear Multiply, Gamma equals to 2.2, Mode - Color Mapping Only (no gamma).

Then from Rendering Menu > Gamma Settings: make sure that Enable Gamma checked and set Gamma value to 2.2.

Max 2014 will automatically apply gamma correction to each image depending on its extension - for example JPG images will be automatically gamma corrected when loaded since they have sRGB-profiles but linear-type file formats like EXR/HDR and etc won't be.

With this setup Vray will load, render and output image in linear-color space which then could be loaded in Nuke and it will appear in the same way as in Vray Frame Buffer.

[E-Lahoz]

Watch this tutorial, maked by me for the V-Ray Spanish community.
http://youtu.be/m4GrAjcbsG0
Is in Spanish.

[stevejjd]

Thank you very much for that.

I think the problem is when I try to turn a 32bit exr into either 16 or 8 bit image.

I thought I had a LW problem but its not that at all - that's an easy fix.

Now I just need to know how to translate 32 bit images into 16 or 8 bit ones without making it look posterized.

So I need to know how to convert a 32bit exr to 16 or 8 in photoshop and After Effects and Nuke.

[E-Lahoz]

Change your workflow to TIFF 16b with sRGB. I try a lot of times to work in exr and now I prefer to work with tiff. Try it.

[stevejjd]

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me!!

The Tif files dont crunch so much though when I gamma correct them to 2.2 its a bit brighter.

Really im after a perfect 1:1 representation workflow.

Its such a pain to be so close to publishing work and its not 100% the same as the Vray Frame buffer.

Thanks for your input