Looking for clarity on Color Management in 3ds Max 2025+ with Corona 13

[TomG]

It's visible for voting :)

[mase]

Interested to hear what other TM setups are you using (since you've mentioned that slapping AGX TM is only necessary for certain cameras)?

I'm also a big fan of 2 LUT AgX tonemapping setup that was shared in this forum, and I believe combined with Tone Curve it pretty much works in any kind of scenario (at least visually speaking). I also hear that some people use ACES / AgX interchangeably, depending on lighting situation, so I'm always very eager to know what other TM setups are people using out there (of course, if it's not a company secret or something).

And I guess to relate to the thread, I would also assume that most studios / artists who mainly produce archviz don't need to mess with color management settings besides simply keeping their monitors calibrated and using those profiles correctly.

[Aram Avetisyan]

Cheers, thanks for doing that. Just for the sake of clarity, we're just looking for a really quick and simple way to load in custom ToneMapping setups, mostly just to get the AGX workflow going (which requires two LUTs to be loaded and other things to be present in the stack). But currently this isn't accessible via scripting. That's the goal - just a dead simple script button we can hit to whack a TM stack onto selected cams.

Hi Alex,

Given that you have saved the custom tone mapping to a file (btw it is possible since Corona 12 via maxscript by:

Code: [Select]

CoronaRenderer.CoronaFp.savePostSettings <filepath> command), you can use this script to load it first to global tonemapping, then copy to selected cameras. This is a quick and simple way, as you mentioned :) Probably the ultimate thing will be a button in toolbar, which adds the two LUTs of yours to selected cameras. For this a bit more complex code is needed.

Code: [Select]

--Save current global tone mapping, just in case
initColorMap = renderers.current.colormap_pipeline
initColorMapFile = CoronaRenderer.CoronaFp.savePostSettings "path\to\test_post.conf"

--load saved custom config file to global tone mapping
newCoronaMap = CoronaRenderer.CoronaFp.loadPostSettings "path\to\cam_post.conf"
toCopy = renderers.current.colormap_pipeline

--copy to selected CoronaCameras

for cam in selection do (
if classOf cam == CoronaCam then (
cam.colorMappingPipeline = toCopy
cam.colorMappingOverride = true
)
)
just change the paths and it's ready.

Hope this works for you.

[alexyork]

Cheers! We're going to give this a try.

[alexyork]

We've managed to get this working, but only when VFB2 is used. Unfortunately not under VFB1 (which is preferred by some of our artists). Just something to be aware of. We really hope to see some good UI changes to VFB2 so we can fully move to it.

[TomG]

We are trying to address the biggest issues with the VFB 2 for Corona 14, and we look forward to your feedback once we get that out in a daily build!

[Aram Avetisyan]

We've managed to get this working, but only when VFB2 is used. Unfortunately not under VFB1 (which is preferred by some of our artists). Just something to be aware of. We really hope to see some good UI changes to VFB2 so we can fully move to it.

It is the file saving that brings the limitation. Not sure about your workflow, but if you have the desired tone mapping loaded to a single camera (or global tone mapping), it should be very easy to duplicate that to the rest.

[piotrus3333]

And I guess to relate to the thread, I would also assume that most studios / artists who mainly produce archviz don't need to mess with color management settings besides simply keeping their monitors calibrated and using those profiles correctly.

it's not about the subject but the delivery technology: most phones nowadays have P3 screens. this means that non colour managed Corona UNDERSTANDS only 67% of colours a small device in your pocket is able to DISPLAY. that does not sound very PBR, does it?

[mase]

And I guess to relate to the thread, I would also assume that most studios / artists who mainly produce archviz don't need to mess with color management settings besides simply keeping their monitors calibrated and using those profiles correctly.

it's not about the subject but the delivery technology: most phones nowadays have P3 screens. this means that non colour managed Corona UNDERSTANDS only 67% of colours a small device in your pocket is able to DISPLAY. that does not sound very PBR, does it?

No it does not and perhaps I assumed wrong.

Please share your opinion and expertise on this matter - since we're living in times where media is consumed on all kinds of screens - should archviz studios bother with color managing their workflow? Again, my knowledge is very limited on this topic but I'm always eager to learn.

[piotrus3333]

heh, I was hoping the phone display example will put things into perspective more clearly.
P3 HDR displays will be a new standard at some point. like displays bigger than HD did.
and when displays got bigger we started to render bigger images. same with colours. just a loop of progress - adoption - standard.

if you don’t see the need today - no point in worrying about it. it’s enough to be aware of the progress part.