fk u gama

Oh my god, 3Ds Max 2014 really did my head in. If I could go back in time, I would advise my past self to NOT select to use 3Ds Max 2014 for Graduation Project. Even though it was a minor change to the 2014 version of Max, it had a large impact on my Project flow. The 2014 version of Max has disabled users ability to edit the level of gamma output and input on their renders. (If I had the time I would gladly write a letter of compliant to Autodesk, haha.)

This issue only arose as I was at my almost final steps of pumping out my final renders. All was well, until I came to the realisation that, as when I was saving the renders, my renders would save as a different version that was shown on the render viewport in Max. The image in the view port was my ideal render and set up, though once saved as PNG. JPEG. or Open as exr. It looked completely different. The contrast was lower making the image more washed out.

After a lot of tears, soul searching and discussions with other class mates, we all came to the realisation it was 3Ds Max 2014's inability to allow users to customise and switch from the default 'Output Gamma: 2.2' setting to the desired Output Gamma setting of 1.0.

Through a load of research done by myself and fellow classmates. There were at least 3 different solutions to this issue. One was to manually edit the CurrentDefaults.ini file in the 'AppData' folder located in the C Drive. This edit involved re-wording one section of the configuration settings from,

"output gamma: 2.2" to output gamma: 1.0"

Once this edit was made, it would save then override the setting in 2014.

The second option was to save as a lower version, open in the older version, alter the settings and continue working on a lower version of Max, e.g. 2012.

Third option followed the first steps as the second which was to open the file in a lower version then alter the Output Gamma settings to 1.0, then after that save then re open in 2014. Which by then will prompt you to either continue to work with the typical 2014 setting of Output gamma setting of 2.2 or co-ordinate itself to match with the recently altered file Output Gamma setting of 1.0.

(For your consideration I tried all three options to see which was best.)

I considered going back to versions such as 2012 and 2013. Though first of all I wanted to try and solve the gamma issue on 2014.

BUT, behold. Truth be told, if I had a clearer eye or a better eye for detail, there is in fact an option when saving an image, to change the gamma settings, just before you save. Now all of this seems like a waste of time. Kool.




Setting up a workflow is always a hard and strenuous process at the beginning. After the first apartment, I started to a created an informal workflow.