acescg workflow - max 2024 is it a lot less ambiguous now?

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max General
1

using vray6 and max 2024 is acescg workflow a lot more simple now? am i missing something in the following simplified workflow?

ACESCG work flow Max 2024

  1. Set Color Management in 3ds Max to OCIO – 3ds Max Default *this one I set to AdobeRGB otherwise sRGB
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    1. This disables Vray Settings for acescg
  2. Manually set each bitmap (jpgs, tga, png etc.) to Color Space transfer of sRGB
  3. Manually set each bitmap (jpgs, tga, png etc.) to sRGB Primaries – all within the vray bitmap assuming the images are non-color managed or sRGB
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  4. In the VFB, switch to OCIO and check the box for Save in Image, also set Display Device to sRGB or aRGB depending on which you are using
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  5. Save 16-bit TIF file from VFB and open in PS, upon warning, assign aRGB
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  6. The image should pretty much match the VFB exactly. For me reds are a little warmer and touch more saturated but that could be my old monitor profile and crap monitor.

thanks
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2

Asked the same thing on the autodesk forums and got no reply. I guess no one actually knows.

3

Hi, thanks for posting. You don’t need to do anything but switch the 3ds Max’s colour space to ACEScg.
3dsmax_2024-02-28_17-08-23.gif

4

i can’t reply

5

well long and short of what i was trying to post is that this seems to work for me and i’m getting some benefits of using higher color space and range

6

i can’t reply

Hi @s_gru I am not sure I understand. Don’t you agree with my post?
The way 3ds Max’s ACEScg colour space works is it automatically switches V-Ray’s rendering RGB primaries from sRGB to ACEScg and enables the “auto RGB primaries for VRayBitmap texture” and assigns the ocio correction for the VFB Display correction.
As far as I’ve tested simply enabling the ACEScg from 3ds Max 2024 is all it needs.

7

no, i literally couldnt reply! i was getting forum errors ao i tried replying short random text and finally the errors went away. ha

8

yeah so its much easier now. i also found that using a vray color map works well when picking rgb values from paint companies.

9

presumably just switching the 3ds Max’s colour space to ACEScg doesnt fix the texture transforms, unless they are named with srgb, raw etc?

10

that seems to be what i’m seeing. my bad though is that i am so used to dragging and dropping bitmaps into slate material editor, that i have to run the conversion from bitmap > vraybitmap. in doing this, plus have 3ds Max set to OCIO, i notice every bitmap has inverse gamma - except it must know when a “data” bitmap is being used b/c that seem to switch to appropriate settings. so i manually change them all if i have an older scene. otherwise going forward i can just use the vraybitmap and set appropriately. im not into re-naming all my bitmaps at this point.

i wish i could drag-n-drop to auto create a vraybitmap :slight_smile:

11

If you use exr textures you will have to rename them with a suffix or switch the RGB primaries trough VRayBitmap manually. For jpeg and png it should work out of the box.

12

Thanks for the clarification on this Vladimir. Do you think we could get a sticky about how all of this works now so it just becomes general knowledge to your users?

I noticed a lot of the current sticky links are very outdated and some links no longer work.

Just a QOL suggestion.

13

The sad reality is currently 3ds Max is ahead of VRay regarding colour management.
Automatic primaries/gamma assignments for textures: VRay recognizes only a few suffixes and 3ds Max lets you customize rules based on filenames or extensions.
3ds Max and max bitmaps are now fully controlled by your OCIO config (rules are saved into config conveniently) but VRay continues with its own implementation limited to srgb/acescg. 3ds Max just flips some switches inside VRay for you - that’s all.

14

Sadly, V-Ray six has to work with another five version of 3ds Max, which Max 2024 does not.
There’s a chance to do better going forward.

15

No question about it.
But at the moment things are more messy than previously.
On top of that is incomplete implementation of ocio v2 (looks) in both VRay and Max.

16

The delay, and ensuing mess, is par for the course when you have third party tech to implement for which you can’t pick the timings.
Not the first, not the last time we’ll have to dance to a broken rhythm.
Thanks for the patience.