Color management Maya 2016
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmq8q23wJ8

Simple runthrough of the new color management system in Maya 2016 and some of the pitfalls. As well as a look at the old vs new workflows.

thanks Dave :)

Great job Dave. I would have never figured this out.

Thanks guys the fact that it turns itself off automatically when you open an older scene caused me a bit of head scratching at first.

It makes sense that it does, but still...

Glad someone found this useful
Cheers
David

I have been working in Maya 2016 for a couple of months now and always used the old Color Management workflow. Color management is turned of in the preferences and all my textures with color information are connected through a gamma correct node. For the final render I brake the connection with the lens shader. When saving as an OpenEXR file I get the following result in Photoshop (sorry for the low quality):
http://i.imgur.com/nx0qKBE.jpg

So after seeing your video I thought I should should give this new Color Management a try. I deleted all my gamma correct nodes and turned on Color Management in the Preferences leaving everything on the defaults. But now I get this result:
http://imgur.com/VVxo3bt.jpg

It looks as if all my lights are way too bright.
Shouldn't my render look exactly the same as before? Or did I miss something crucial?

Did you remove the connection to the lense shader for the render?

Yes I did break the connection to the lens shader

can you send me the file david@simply3dworld.com or put it somewhere i can download it i'll try and tell you what's going on.

If possible send me the one with the old color management workflow

I have your scene file i'll take a look at it when i finish work.

David :)

I took some time and recorded a short video with some thoughts on your scene including a breakdown of how i applied the colour management workflow.

Sorry if I lecture a bit i go into tutorial mode and can't help myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8YerlTrFZ4

I hope it helps you out, any other questions just ask. BTW the video is unlisted on my personal youtube channel. With your permission i'll make it public as it may help someone else.
David

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. I will give it a second try tomorrow morning.
The HDR indeed is a bit big so I should have known that it wasn't a good idea to use it this way.
Also thanks for the tip on the GI prototype, will try it out as well.

As for making the video public, you have got my permission. Hope it'll help someone else as well.

I blurred de HDR and used the new Color Management and now it renders fine.

The render below is done using the GI prototype. Quality is set pretty low so it's a bit grainy but it looks pretty good.
http://i.imgur.com/khswor9.jpg

Probably going to post some updates from this scene in de work in progress section as it is far from finisht. I want to take it too the next level and make it as photorealistic as possible. Still lots to learn.

If you really want to push it you're going to have to break it down into passes and comp it back together.

You can now get nuke studio free for non commercial use it's the best compositing app in the business IMO and the new render pass system is good much better than the old one. Look up light path expressions. Also start using the mila material! it good

Check this out
http://simplymaya.com/autodesk-maya-...-5/?tut_id=375

Goes through the new pass system in 2016 and recomp in nuke for stills and animations. If you don't fancy working through that at least check out the new pass system and the mila material it will save you a ton of time later on down the road

All the best
David

Breaking it down into passes is already on the planning. Haven't used it before so the tut might be a good start.
Is the Mila material that much better dan the Mia Material? Not used it before but I'll check it out.

As for Nuke, I might try the non commercial version. See if it is better than photoshop for just still images.

the mila material is better, faster to render, better SSS. Not only that it's the future of mental ray, the new render pass system only works with the mila material. Layering materials as opposed to just having one giant one makes a lot of sense try it :)

As for nuke vs photoshop, well PS has no true plus operation the closest it comes is screen, so it's actually not possible to put something back together in PS (I forgot linear dodge, just a reminder to not post anything before coffee), it will do for a quick job but it's not a true compositing application. There is as far as i know no premult and unpremult in PS so handling of alpha channels for render passes is horrible.

Don't get me wrong you can use PS for a quick job, but if you want to do it right move over to nuke or another compositing app.

So maya passes -> nuke composite and colour management -> photoshop if say you wanted to do a paint over (can also be done in nuke but i prefer PS to paint in)

Hope that helps
Dave