Maya 2016 Color Management and Vray 3.1

[isoparmesan]

I just got V-Ray 3.1 set up on a fresh install of Maya 2016.

I've been using V-Ray 2.4 on Maya 2015, and I'm wondering how the new version of V-Ray is affected by the new color management options in 2016.

Previously, I was setting color management up as Linear Multiply, Gamma 2.2, Adaptation Only, and then correcting textures via texture input gamma, and correcting colors with a gamma correct node. This worked fine.

I noticed that the color swatch selector in Maya 2016 now has a color management checkbox, and there is a color management section in the Preferences. Should these options change the linear workflow with V-Ray? Or are there things I need to enable/disable in V-Ray or Maya to use the previous workflow?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

It will affect only the preview, but not textures for example. V-Ray 3.1 doens't support SynColor.

[isoparmesan]

Preview of what? and what about swatches? What I'm really curious about is what affect the "color management" checkbox in the swatch editor will have.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

We actually had an internal build that supproted SynColor 6 months ago, but you don't want to use it It's about 20% slower since SynColor is not optimized for ray tracing... We are working with Autodesk to have something more reasonable.

[mayanic]

interesting!

plz keep us posted
i'm going to follow this thread constantly

[FSGFX]

We actually had an internal build that supproted SynColor 6 months ago, but you don't want to use it It's about 20% slower since SynColor is not optimized for ray tracing... We are working with Autodesk to have something more reasonable.

any progress on the SynColor slowdown...?
will it be save to use it in the near future..?

[isoparmesan]

I never really got an answer to my question in this thread. If I have my render settings at Linear Multiply, Gamma 1.0 (VFB applying 2.2 gamma), Adaptation only, and using the texture input gamma adjustment, or gamma correct nodes for color, when I'm selecting colors, what should I have the settings in the color picker set at?

[alvius]

I think you should completely disable Maya 2016 Color Management in preferences and work the way you used to work with V-Ray 2. At least I'm working this way.

[francomanko]

can we get some confirmation on this, I keep wondering if i need to be using the gamma correct anymore on swatches etc. Maybe a clear consise list of what needs to be done would be useful. Nail it once and for all.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Well, in an ideal world, you should do nothing... I would guess that in 99% of the cases, people follow a standard workflow, and the software knows what to do. It's really an artificial issue created by decades of bad software design related to linear flow IMO... If you want everything in Maya to work as expected, I'm really not sure what advice I can give...
- for proper viewport textures - We've added an environment var called VRAY_FOR_MAYA_VP2_GAMMA that will apply the standard 2.2 color correction to all texture. It's not on by default, because the viewport 2.0 sRGB color correction is not on by default.... Another way is to use the gamma correction node. A third way is to use SynColor, but we still don't support it in the viewport. This will be fixed when we rewrite the V-Ray materials for the new Maya VP 2.0 API (since the old one turned out to be a dead end...).
- for swatch rendering of non-VRay nodes (like the file node itself) - the only way is to use SynColor.
- for swatch rendering of VRay nodes, there is an option to color correct the swatch output in the Color Mapping, advanced section called "Affect swatches". It's a bit confusing since it works with the options there, not the VFB window which you use for the final rendering. In Maya 2016, SynColor will automatically color correct the swatches.
- for the Material Viewer in Maya 2016 - there is a color correction button in the toolbar.
- color picking from the VFB should give you a linear color, so when you enter it directly as a simple color, it should give you the expected result. To visualize it properly in the swatch, the swatch itself should just work properly in sRGB color space. SynColor is the only way to visualize it properly in the color picker. For picking in the viewport, I think Autodesk made this working also with SynColor (but I haven't tested it).

[francomanko]

thanks for that.

[pollack]

Are these instructions still the current recommendations?

When you say to use syncolor what does that mean and how specifically does someone use it? Is Syncolor the Maya Color Management system?

Where is the color correction button in the Material Viewer's toolbar? I don't see one.

[yolov]

Syncolor is the color management system in maya, yes. The instructions still hold ground.
The material viewer, along with all shader color pickers and procedural texture colors should always be linear since corrections like gamma or srgb apply reverse corrections to input data. Procedural colors don't need it in maya (I'll try and dig up the detailed info from autodesk).

[sharktacos]

- for proper viewport textures - We've added an environment var called VRAY_FOR_MAYA_VP2_GAMMA that will apply the standard 2.2 color correction to all texture.

An issue here is that one should not apply gamma corrections to all textures. Several common textures (bump maps, normal maps, displacement maps, HDR maps, etc) should not be gamma corrected. So there would need to be a way to specify which textures should get a degamma, and which should not. In the Maya 2016 system this is done based on a string in the texture file name. So one could say that all files that match *_bmp_* are raw and do not get a degamma, and all files that match *_dif_* do get a degamma. Is there a way to do this with the Vray VRAY_FOR_MAYA_VP2_GAMMA variable?

[vlado]

In the Maya 2016 system this is done based on a string in the texture file name. So one could say that all files that match *_bmp_* are raw and do not get a degamma, and all files that match *_dif_* do get a degamma. Is there a way to do this with the Vray VRAY_FOR_MAYA_VP2_GAMMA variable?

We do not support these rules yet, although it is on the "to do" list.

Best regards,
Vlado