Hello everybody,

I’m new to 3ds max and a bit confused about colors, gamma etc.

In default settings, the gamma correction and LUT is activated with 2.2 without affecting color palette. So as you can see on my screen shot, the colors picked for diffuse color don’t match with the colors in editor view.

Please look here:

http://makersmind.de/colormatch.png

So it’s hard to choose colors why I changed the switch in properties for affecting color palette too. So now the choosen color matches the displayed material. (2nd image)

Please look here:

http://makersmind.de/rgbValues.png

BUT, the rgb values for the choosen color seem to be veeeery low. A value of RGB 8,3,1 is very dark, i guess, and not that bright brown color. Other programs like photoshop have other rgb values for that color.

To have a closer look at the brightness I made a gradient in another 3D software (Cinema 4D) with activated linear workflow (corrected gamma) and without activated LWF in comparision with 3ds max with activated and deactivated gamma correction. To me it seems that 3ds max is way to bright - there is hardly any black in the gradient.

Please look here:

http://makersmind.de/LWF_3dsmax.png

Also by switching gamma correction on and off makes a difference like day and night:
Please look here:

http://makersmind.de/LWF.png

Is this meant to be that dark respectively bright?

So now my problem is, I don’t know which setting I should use because with no gamma correction it seems very dark but on the other hand the colors are displayed the way I use to know it by other applications. With gamma correction activated the colors seems too bright and don’t match the rgb values of other applications.

Thanks for your help.
Greetings,

ynnus

EDIT: Sorry for the big images. It wasn’t my intention to embedding them. I just wrote the link and the forum software converted them to images. So now linked as quotes.

How things look in your viewport is less important than how they look once rendered out.  All of your examples appear to be screen grabs.  I’m curious what the final rendered output looks like.

With Gamma Correction enabled, some of what you see in the viewport will appear much lighter than you’d expect.  But once the image is rendered out, you’ll find that it looks much more correct.

Post an image of the rendered object, and please attach the image, don’t embed it.  Not only does that mess with the formatting (I have to scroll to read all text) but links tend to break, and the reference images get lost in the ether.

3ds Max Design 2012 64-bit - Subscription Advantage Pack / PU10
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

Oh, and thank you for imbedding your rather large images...NOT

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
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3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion

@Chris:
Unfortunately the rendered image looks exactly the same as in the editor view. So the brightness and color is the same.

	Attachment

No, it’s not calibrated. But I assume it’s not that much wrong in color and brightness as the editor of 3ds max shows the colors. Every other software (photoshop, cinema 4D, after effects) has no problems with brightness or colors but 3ds max.

What you’re seeing is normal because gamma correction is non-linear color space. The color needs to be corrected just like linear bitmaps need correction. You can either adjust the color like you did in the color selector, or add a utility gamma & gain map and put the color in there.

And I usually keep affect material editor checked in the gamma settings so the material editor is accurate.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

Not sure I understand the issue the right way, but the “Sample Screen Color” tool (pipette) in the Color Selector doesn’t work as expected; that’s a minor bug and nobody will repair it soon, there is so much to be fixed.
So if you are trying to select colors from the view-port using the “pipette”, you will get colors different from the ones, assigned through the Material editor.
And all this is not a Gamma issue; Gamma is affecting manly the bitmaps not the colors in such a dramatic way.

ivan

But why is the gamma correction setting in my 3ds max affecting the colors in the viewport that much? It’s not only bitmaps but colors in general. I’m confused about the very low rgb values because every color in the editor view is boosted in brightness (as you can see on the images above) so I can’t really get dark colors even with very low rgb values. The effect is, that the difference from black 0,0,0 to 1,0,0 (which should not be visible by pure eye) is now clearly visible.
Please take a look at the attatched image. You can see, 0,0,0 is black but even a 1,1,1 is a light grey and not as dark as it’s supposed to be. And even 1,0,0 is visibly red and not a nearly black color.
And there is no difference from editor view to rendering, both look same.

	Attachment

Are you using gamma for a reason or just trying to learn about it? Let me see if I can explain it a little.

Take a look at the attached image. With gamma of 1 (linear), an input of 50, 50, 50 gives you a luminance output of 0.2, 0.2, 0.2. But with gamma of 2.2 (non-linear), an input of 50, 50, 50 gives you an output of about 0.03, 0.03, 0.03. That’s why you’re values are so low.

And if you use mental ray with mental ray materials, you’re color picker will have normalized values (0.0-1.0) instead of 8-bit integers (0-255), which will give you a wider range of colors.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

	Attachment

Hi, I made a scene in my computer but wanted to render in other, in my computer i turned use the autodesk gamma lut instead of the default configuration, i started rendering in the other and the images were rendered washed out, i couldnt understand why until i checked the use autodesk gamma lut...I always though that gamma lut had to do only with the display, but it seems to affect the rendered images, i dont understand quite well the gamma lut option even with the explanation in this thread, can anybody explain more please?