Correctly Setting Up a Linear Workflow in Maya

Correctly Setting Up a Linear Workflow in Maya

on Aug 17th 2012 with 5 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Software: Autodesk Maya
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Estimated Completion Time: 30 Minutes
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Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 6 of 13 in the Productivity and Building a Better Workflow Session
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So you might often find yourself wondering “what the hell is a linear workflow?” It’s the kind of thing that gives cg artists nightmares, waking in a cold sweat, afraid, left stumbling to your computer looking for answers…well you’re not alone. Working linearly is one of the most misunderstood, confusing aspects of computer graphics for all artists, new or experienced. But fear not friends, James Whiffin is here to help turn that frown upside down by giving you a crash course on working linearly.

In this jammed packed tutorial, James will show you how to setup and work with a correct Linear Workflow in Maya and the benefits of using one. He’ll explain gamma correction and the difference between working in Linear space and sRGB Color space, and why problems can arise during rendering and post production if things are setup incorrectly. Click through to unlock the mystery!

Tutorial Video:

Note: Click the ‘Box’ icon to view the tutorial in full-screen HD.
Download: Video(s) can be downloaded from the ‘Tutorial Details’ section above.

Are you an After Effects user? Well find out how to work linearly in AE in this tutorial.

Use the link below to download this tutorial for offline viewing.
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I'm a freelance VFX artist from Brisbane. Please check out my website at vfxbyjames.info.  

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  • clink

    Compositing in linear space is a HUGE difference and worth every second of linearizing your workflow, but Isn’t there a simpler way? gamma correct every single color is a big pain.

    I wish there were a script or something

  • Jin Hao

    I second to that. I hope there was a script or a pass to gamma correct all textures and colors at once.

  • hell

    just simply turn on Color management on top of the common render tab in render settings to avoiding the gamma correct node

  • http://elementalray.wordpress.com David

    I have a correction here:

    You are using the color management in the Common Tab to control viewing your image (stated near 6:24) This is not desired because you are altering the colorspace of the actual written image. Instead you should use the controls provided in the render view to *view* the image correctly while maintaining the linear colorspace of the images whether rendered to the render view or batch rendered later.

    You can find the controls here: Render View -> Display -> Color Management

    This will also allow you to add a LUT for viewing other desired output.

    I also think you may be complicating the process in the Common Tab, for once the defaults are correct. If you provide sRGB textures as you have done in the video, the input colorspace in the common tab should be sRGB (the default). This tells mental ray your textures are sRGB. Instead you are telling it they are linear sRGB globally and then going into each texture node individually and changing it BACK to sRGB. This is an extra step for each file node.

    Lastly, you can render to RGBA (Half 16-bit), this is considered a floating point format but saves quite a bit of room compared to 32-bit float. Half 16-bit is not the same as 16-bit. The Half is a special file format from nVidia that allows floating point data with small precision loss. But the resulting smaller file size is welcome on servers and when loading.

  • Jin Hao

    @ david: i would love to use that workflow you mention, but i doubt if he will get the exact same results he was satisfied with in the video. At least, i didn’t when i tried it on mine. The problem particularly lies in textures of the models being lit and not the illumination of the scene itself. The textures and materials do not respond the same way to the light source whether he used your workflow or the one in his tutorial.