Using color management in your scene

Using this feature, you can control the color profile associated with inputs to and outputs from the rendering process. Certain scene elements can have color profile information attached to them, namely, file textures, render passes, mental ray textures, and mental ray file output passes. Additionally, you can specify the color profile used for internal rendering color calculations.

You can enable color management through the Render Settings: Common tab and select your default input and output color profile. In order for color management to work, you must select Enable Color Management in the Common tab of your Render Settings window. Simply selecting a color profile under the scene elements or creating a colorProfile node in the Hypershade does not enable color management.

You can associate color profiles with different elements:

• File Texture / mentalrayTexture node
  • Indicates the color profile that the texture source uses.
• Render Pass
  • Indicates the color profile to be used when writing the render pass to disk.
• mentalrayOutputPass node
  • The attached color profile will dictate the color profile for use when the image is written to disk.
  Note

  You must enable File Mode under the mentalrayOutputPass node for the Color Profile attribute to be enabled.

To apply color management to your scene

1. Open the Render Settings window and select the Common tab.
2. Select the Enable Color Management option. The color profile attributes become active.
3. Select a Default Input Profile from the drop-down list. This is the default color profile for file texture / mentalrayTexture nodes.
4. Select a Default Output Profile from the drop-down list. This is the default color profile for writing render passes or images to disk.
5. Select the render pass node for which you want to enable color management.
   Note

   The same procedure can be used to associate a color profile with other scene elements such as a file texture. Simply replace renderPass node with your scene element.

6. In the render pass Attribute Editor, use the Color Profile drop-down list to select the color profile to use when writing the render pass to disk.

   There are two sections available in the Color Profile drop-down list.

   

   Under the first section, there is a list of built-in color profiles. Under the second section, there is a list of any existing color profile nodes that are currently in your scene.

   Note

   • If you first select an existing colorProfile node, then change your mind and select a built-in color profile instead, the colorProfile node still exists in your scene. It is simply disconnected from your scene element.
   • If you select the default option under the list of built-in color profiles, Maya will use the Default Output Profile setting (for render pass or mentalrayOutputPass nodes) or the Default Input Profile setting (for file texture / mentalrayTexture nodes) that you selected under the Render Settings: Common tab.

To create a colorProfile node (method 1)

1. Select the File texture to which you want to connect a color profile node.
2. In the FileAttribute Editor, click the colorProfile node icon.

   A colorProfile node is created and connected to the File node that you have selected. The colorProfile node appears in the Attribute Editor along with its associated File node and you can edit its attributes.

To create a colorProfile node (method 2)

1. Open the Hypershade window.
2. Under the Maya > Utilities section of the Create tab, click Color Profile.
3. Select the scene element to which you want to connect your colorProfile node.
4. the colorProfile node and select Apply to Selection.
   Tip

   Using this method, you can connect your colorProfile node to multiple scene elements in one step. For example, you can use a MEL script to select all of your render passes, then the colorProfile node and select Apply to Selection to connect your colorProfile node to all of your passes.

Topics in this section

• Color managed linear workflow
• Using color management in the Render View: sample workflow

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