Using color management in the Render View: sample workflow

This example scene consists of a city view with buildings and cars, with the mia_physicalsun and mia_physicalsky shaders applied for lighting.

Note

The mental ray for Maya renderer is used in this example.

This example demonstrates how to:

use the mia_physicalsun and mia_physicalsky shaders with color management
set your Render View to display floating point images
render a .exr image
enable color management in your Render Settings window
enable color management in your Render View
tweak the exposure and contrast of the Render View image
save your color managed output

Using mia_physicalsun and mia_physicalsky with color management

If your scene includes the mia_physicalsun and mia_physicalsky shaders, you must disconnect the mia_physicalsky lens shader from all cameras that you want to render from. Otherwise, your result may appear incorrect.

Select View > Camera Attribute Editor > mental ray and the Lens Shader attribute and select Break Connection to break the connection between the lens shader and each of your cameras.

Setting up your Render View to display HDR images

In order to view 32-bit floating point images in your Render View, you must set your Render View display options accordingly.

Method 1

Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences > Rendering and select 32-bit floating-point (HDR).

Method 2

Select Display > 32-bit floating-point (HDR) in the Render View window.

Render a .exr image

When rendering an image using the .exr file format, you must change your framebuffer type to 32-bit float. Otherwise, your image will be clamped to [0, 1].

Select OpenEXR under Image Format in the Render Settings window, Common tab, File Output section.
In the Quality tab, Framebuffer section, select RGBA (Float) 4x32 bit as your Data type.

Note

A warning appears if you have selected OpenEXR as your image format but your data type is not set correctly.

Enable color management in your Render Settings

In the Render Settings: Common tab, select Enable Color Management under Color Management.
Set the Default Output Profile to Linear sRGB. This is the color profile used for your render output.
Render your scene.

Enable color management in your Render view

In the Render View window, select Display > Color Management to display the ViewColorManager node.
Set the Image Color Profile to Linear sRGB. This is the color profile for your image source file.
Note
This is the same option that you selected for your Default Output Profile in the Render Settings window.
Set the Display Color Profile to sRGB. This is the recommended option for displaying on computer monitors.

Tweak the exposure and contrast of your Render View image

Tweak the Exposure and Contrast sliders to view details in the over-bright and over-dark regions of the image.

Note

For more information about these attributes, see Render View color management node.

Save your color managed output

After you have adjusted the Exposure and Contrast settings, you can save your color managed output.

Select File > Save Image > and select Save Color-Managed Image.

Note

You can also save your raw image (without color management) by selecting the Save Raw Image option.

Render output

The following image is the render output saved using the Save Color-Managed Image option, but with the Display Color Profile set to Linear sRGB and the Exposure and Contrast sliders set to 0. This image is best used for compositing as it allows you to apply additional calculations.

The following image is the render output saved using the Save Color-Managed Image option, but with the Display Color Profile set to sRGB and with the Exposure and Contrast set to custom values.

The following image was rendered with the lens shader attached to the camera and with color management disabled in the Render Settings window. Use it as a reference and compare it to the previous two images.