Wow somehow I missed your post Genny...

The bit depth makes perfect sense to me....

So here is where the newb in me is the issue....I googled for the answer but could not find it...I did however, see a lot of reference's to banding and as a photographer I understand the banding issue from 8-bit. But....

How do I change the bit depth in my MR renders? lol....

My settings are Preferences>Rendering>32-bit floating point.

MR>Quality>Framebuffer>RGBA (Short) 4X16 Bit.

I found one strange reference for creating a text file and saving it as a Maya.env with the text:

IMF_TIFF_COMPRESSION = none

And placing it in the Maya project folder and restarting....

lol...sometimes Maya seems so strange to newbs...

ack.....

Can't believe I got past Expressions.....