Thanks for the explanation! I have not yet completely switched to 3ds max 2014, so far I always used the V-Ray Max Converter Pro - with that it was always done with one click. If someone is looking for a quick solution. The "in-depth" variant from you is of course the 100% solution :)
This is invaluable, Jonas - thank you so much for making it look easy, even though it surely must have taken a while to figure out to setup correctly. There are benefits to using ACES surely, but one must be careful to do it the right way, you've spared me so many headaches. Hats off!
honestly right now as it is, it's way to complicated to work with ACES. When I work in a big architectural scene with 50 different assets imported, am i really going to change all the materials to ACES? I don't think so. so as long as it isn't implemented as a standard and in some way automatically, i will not use it. rather use the time for artistic choices of you scene.
Hi Jonas, thanks a lot for a great video. I'm trying to get onto the ACES bandwagon too, but I seem to struggle a bit. I quite like the colors and the highlight rolloff of the ACES profile but what I'm struggling with is the overall high contrast and oversaturation of the images. Especially the blacks appear almost crushed to me when comparing the new ACES to a typical (old-school) LWF. Did you also have this feeling when you moved over to ACES?
This might be a silly question but how do you know what to change them too manually? like for instance changing the normal map to raw/none but the diffuse to srbg primaries/srgb. Also a lot of the times when I load in a texture it shows as from 3ds max or auto. I'm guessing if its a colour then you would use srgb but if its a normal/bump/roughness then it would be set to none/raw.
Yes, basically it is always the same workflow. I would never use and auto modes or from 3Ds Max and always set it manually. So most times the diffuse or other color maps such as self illumination should be sRGB and all the data maps such as roughness, normal, bump etc should be raw.
Hi Jonas, how do you cope with ACES making Color / Image Textures too saturated? -because in my case, Clients are too specific on Color / Image Textures they gave
What settings should I then use for the file exports? I usually save frames to 32 but TGAs for maximum software compatibility and those then either end up darker or desaturated, depending on what settings I try, but never identical to the sRGB display in the VFB.
Thank you for this! Do the nametags have to be a suffix in order to work? Also, under "Render Setup -> V-Ray" there is also a "Color mapping" tab which is not greyed out. In advanced setting you can see Gamma is 2,2 - would this still be correct?
In my personal opinion ACES makes sense if you work in a whole team or pipeline that requires it. For Archviz if all you are delivering are single rendered images and your client doesn't care about what workflow you are using I would say there are not that many benefits apart from futurproofing your work or if you particularly fancy the "ACES-look" through the OCIO tonemapping.
@@JonasNoell Aside from the workflow benefits, does ACES provide more real representation of colors and light intensity compared to sRGB color space + filmic tone mapping? It always felt to me that filmic tone mapping changes the color hue of my textures and I have to compensate for that. For example, textures that are reddish in tone start to appear yellowish with filmic tone mapping.
@JonasNoell you must be kidding.. a typical archviz scene contains thousands of objects with 3-6++ textures each. are we supposed to manually rework them all? ITS INSANE!
In 2024 you can automatically define the input colorspace based on various parameters. However if you want to make sure that everything works correctly it is better to use nametags for your textures
hi. i have question about roughness. when we assign roughness map to refelection roughness, we have to set the refection color to 255 in vray mtl too? thanks alot for your help.
Yes, because this map just defines the roughness. In order to have some reflections show up the reflection color has to be brighter than black. Normally this value should be at pure white as this defines the maximum reflection value at the glancing angles.
Thanks for the tutorial Jonas! I used to render in an ACES Workflow based on your previous video on ACES workflow in max without even knowing that I should be setting up my bitmaps RGB Color Space Parameters and their Color Space Transfer Function to the appropriate options. And to be honest, the renders used to definitely look better than sRGB workflow and they looked quite realistic with some slight color correction adjustments both in material editor and/or in post. Now I started using the new Material Editor, VFB and Max color management settings as you use in this video and my renders look way too saturated and not even slightly close to how they should look. Do you know why this is happening? Because I don't even know what to do at this point anymore!
Are you trying to open existing scenes? It is meant to setup the workflow at the beginning. If you trying to open existing scene which have been setup using a different workflow you might get colors which seem strange to you...
Thank you very much for this video :) Is it possible to set an indiviual display config file for the display correction or am I only able to stick with sRGB? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think your example only works when you are using a sRGB monitor, right?
Mainly because I have been using it for a super long time and so far I haven't encountered any other renderer that could give me tremendously better results quicker and easier. Maybe Corona would be an option, but there are too many inconveniences for me changing personally. Additionally I like that V-Ray is pretty customizable being able to control most parts of the rendering and which lights/reflections/refractions affect which objects and so on...
Let's see, there is already a lot of content in my channel that covers how to do exterior lighting, rendering environments using megascans assets, car shading, procedural mud, rust & dirt effects, using Forestpack/Chaos Scatter PLUS I have a whole course for car rendering on my Patreon, so I don't think there would be a whole lot to add. If you wanna know right now how it's done I recommend to check out those videos first as those are the same techniques.
@@JonasNoell If you could please focus on the animation side of things (settings for flicker-free render, things like motion blur for objects in the scene, tricky for tires), that would be great, because these weren't covered extensively in your tutorials yet.
Thank you very much for this video. Could you please show how to correctly save and export the rendered images and bring them in let's say After Effects to preserve the correct look achieved in 3ds max ? This is the most difficult task I faced when using ACEScg workflows and compositing before the 2024 3ds max implementation (everything looked good inside 3ds max but after exporting images were totally wrong). Thank you again.
The problem with changing color space workflow is: 1. It's not simple enough 2. The benefits for a lot of users are non existent Don't get me wrong, I want to do it "the proper way" by switching to an advanced color space workflow like ACEScg, but I get nightmares just thinking about explaining that workflow, and why we should use it, to my colleagues.
My personal view is: If noone requires you to use it then I wouldn't make the change right now. It's mainly for bigger teams or studios with a whole pipeline setup in ACES where all departments can work with the same colormanagement consistently through different applications. ACES is right now more tedious to work with and it is not a magical button that will make all your renderings nicer. However there is a big interesting in the topic in general, no matter if bigger studio, individual freelancers or hobbyists.
Hi Jonas, thank you for the overview! Do you know if any correction needs to be made to materials using a vertex colour map in the diffuse channel? The vertex colours look different after switching to ACES and I'm not yet sure if it's to be expected. Any further info much appreciated!
Oh good question. Actually I guess it would need to be converted as it doesn't go the normal way through the material editor. I would try to put a VRayOCIO node in front of the vertex color and try out which way they would show correctly. But if that doesn't work I guess the best would be to ask in the Chaos Forums as this is a quite specialized question and I'm not that deep into the whole ACES and conversion stuff.
@@JonasNoell Thanks for your suggestion! That was the first thing I tried but I couldn't get it to match despite trying a range of the most logical inputs/outputs for the conversion. I asked about it on the Autodesk forums and they confirmed vertex colours aren't yet supported from their end so perhaps that's why. Might be worth asking on the Chaos forums as you mentioned. Cheers!
I just need a script that can properly convert vray materials maps to proper settings for aces. With fast turnaround and hundreds or thousands of maps using model libraries its impossible to convert everything manually. vray converter from corona to vray is so bad that half the time it places reflections on 100%, glossiness to zero and bump to 100%. I might be wishing too much for them to have a converter for aces maps that have already been plugged in correctly.
Yeah it’s a pain that’s why I also stick with my sRGB workflow for now. There were some (paid) scripts out there that can switch your shaders and maps to Aces but I forgot what was the name. But I’m sure you can find it, they exist. Don’t rely on the native built in solutions, last time I checked it wasn’t really helpful in that regard…
The weird thing is that it sometimes is implemented and sometimes not from my testing. There seems to be no logic behind it. I even recorded a video about it, you can check it out if you are interested: www.jonasnoell.com/downloads/vray/noNametag_issue.mp4 But I found it to be too complicated to implement it in my tutorial and I would just recommend to nametag or manually define everything and then you are on the safe side always as demonstrated in this tutorial here.
@@JonasNoell Oh my god haha, yeah thats not very useful. I actually started that thread on the chaos forums about the topic of Automatic bitmap colorpspace assignment and i have seen all your comments back and forth there. Been to caught up in my graduation project to respond to the thread though. I really hope they would just give us the option to assume sRGB primaries instead of ACEScg
@bron lebron Yeah from my perspective that would also be the best default behavior but the guys at Chaos seem to disagree with it and default everything to the colorspace selected in the rendersettings 🙂
I don't use Corona, but the entire logic how images should be interpreted would be the same. It's just the question where you push which button which should be easy to find out.
✅Check out Patreon for all my scene files, bonus videos, a whole course on car rendering or just to support this channel 🙂
patreon.com/JonasNoell
At this point I don't bother reading release notes anymore. I just wait for you to release a video about the topic. So much better!
😀
Thanks for the explanation! I have not yet completely switched to 3ds max 2014, so far I always used the V-Ray Max Converter Pro - with that it was always done with one click. If someone is looking for a quick solution. The "in-depth" variant from you is of course the 100% solution :)
btw i would love to see a video from you, where u talk about all the scripts & plugins u use in 3ds max. Your personal favourites etc.. :)
Oh thats a good idea actually! (Even I don't use that many...) :)
Just refilled my coffee, ready to learn. I've been wanting to switch to ACES for a while now.
This is invaluable, Jonas - thank you so much for making it look easy, even though it surely must have taken a while to figure out to setup correctly. There are benefits to using ACES surely, but one must be careful to do it the right way, you've spared me so many headaches. Hats off!
Thank for the tutorial "How to complicate things for no reason". The other you're tutorials are great! Keep the good work!
Haha, I understand why some may see it like that
honestly right now as it is, it's way to complicated to work with ACES. When I work in a big architectural scene with 50 different assets imported, am i really going to change all the materials to ACES? I don't think so. so as long as it isn't implemented as a standard and in some way automatically, i will not use it. rather use the time for artistic choices of you scene.
Very helpful, thanks for sharing.
Hi Jonas, thanks a lot for a great video. I'm trying to get onto the ACES bandwagon too, but I seem to struggle a bit. I quite like the colors and the highlight rolloff of the ACES profile but what I'm struggling with is the overall high contrast and oversaturation of the images. Especially the blacks appear almost crushed to me when comparing the new ACES to a typical (old-school) LWF. Did you also have this feeling when you moved over to ACES?
thank you fot the tutorial!! :)
This might be a silly question but how do you know what to change them too manually? like for instance changing the normal map to raw/none but the diffuse to srbg primaries/srgb. Also a lot of the times when I load in a texture it shows as from 3ds max or auto. I'm guessing if its a colour then you would use srgb but if its a normal/bump/roughness then it would be set to none/raw.
Yes, basically it is always the same workflow. I would never use and auto modes or from 3Ds Max and always set it manually. So most times the diffuse or other color maps such as self illumination should be sRGB and all the data maps such as roughness, normal, bump etc should be raw.
Thanks
thanks
Hi Jonas, how do you cope with ACES making Color / Image Textures too saturated?
-because in my case, Clients are too specific on Color / Image Textures they gave
What settings should I then use for the file exports?
I usually save frames to 32 but TGAs for maximum software compatibility and those then either end up darker or desaturated, depending on what settings I try, but never identical to the sRGB display in the VFB.
I always use EXR. It also can be opened by most software. It should match the VFB exactly
@@JonasNoell Do you save to the suggested defaults or anything different?
what if we make hdr to inverse gamma ? thank you so much
Thank you for this! Do the nametags have to be a suffix in order to work? Also, under "Render Setup -> V-Ray" there is also a "Color mapping" tab which is not greyed out. In advanced setting you can see Gamma is 2,2 - would this still be correct?
Unfortunately Yeah
@@JonasNoell Alright, thanks for replying! I think I edited my comment with one more question after you replied if you dont mind
Hi Jonas, just wondering if you can do a video on 3dsmax 2025 colorio and exporting them in different formats like jpg/exr... thanks in advance
Shouldn’t that be the same as in 2024?
What are the advantages of using ACES color space for Archviz, is it a worthy reason to switch from corona to V-ray?
In my personal opinion ACES makes sense if you work in a whole team or pipeline that requires it. For Archviz if all you are delivering are single rendered images and your client doesn't care about what workflow you are using I would say there are not that many benefits apart from futurproofing your work or if you particularly fancy the "ACES-look" through the OCIO tonemapping.
@@JonasNoell thanks!
@@JonasNoell Aside from the workflow benefits, does ACES provide more real representation of colors and light intensity compared to sRGB color space + filmic tone mapping? It always felt to me that filmic tone mapping changes the color hue of my textures and I have to compensate for that. For example, textures that are reddish in tone start to appear yellowish with filmic tone mapping.
@JonasNoell you must be kidding.. a typical archviz scene contains thousands of objects with 3-6++ textures each. are we supposed to manually rework them all? ITS INSANE!
In 2024 you can automatically define the input colorspace based on various parameters. However if you want to make sure that everything works correctly it is better to use nametags for your textures
what about the AGX for now? when will they support in it?
hi. i have question about roughness.
when we assign roughness map to refelection roughness, we have to set the refection color to 255 in vray mtl too?
thanks alot for your help.
Yes, because this map just defines the roughness. In order to have some reflections show up the reflection color has to be brighter than black. Normally this value should be at pure white as this defines the maximum reflection value at the glancing angles.
@@JonasNoell
Thanks again :)
metalness and opacity ..... alosi like roughness(_raw)??
could you please tell us about other maps?
thanks.
Yes, since those are data maps it should be same like roughness or normal.
Thanks for the tutorial Jonas!
I used to render in an ACES Workflow based on your previous video on ACES workflow in max without even knowing that I should be setting up my bitmaps RGB Color Space Parameters and their Color Space Transfer Function to the appropriate options. And to be honest, the renders used to definitely look better than sRGB workflow and they looked quite realistic with some slight color correction adjustments both in material editor and/or in post. Now I started using the new Material Editor, VFB and Max color management settings as you use in this video and my renders look way too saturated and not even slightly close to how they should look.
Do you know why this is happening? Because I don't even know what to do at this point anymore!
Are you trying to open existing scenes? It is meant to setup the workflow at the beginning. If you trying to open existing scene which have been setup using a different workflow you might get colors which seem strange to you...
Thank you very much for this video :) Is it possible to set an indiviual display config file for the display correction or am I only able to stick with sRGB? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think your example only works when you are using a sRGB monitor, right?
By default it assumes sRGB, but in the OCIO settings you can choose a different display device
@@JonasNoell Ah, awesome - thanks a lot :)
Thanks for vid btw,
This may be a stupid question, but why do you use Vray? Is it because it has certain strengths that only Vray has 🤔?
Mainly because I have been using it for a super long time and so far I haven't encountered any other renderer that could give me tremendously better results quicker and easier. Maybe Corona would be an option, but there are too many inconveniences for me changing personally. Additionally I like that V-Ray is pretty customizable being able to control most parts of the rendering and which lights/reflections/refractions affect which objects and so on...
What kind of computer do you have to do all that? I mean what capacity? greetings from Mexico
I should make this a sticky post, I get asked this already for the 100th time :)
Threadripper 3990x, 64GB RAM, RTX 3060TI
are you making a tutorial about your endless engines scene ?
Let's see, there is already a lot of content in my channel that covers how to do exterior lighting, rendering environments using megascans assets, car shading, procedural mud, rust & dirt effects, using Forestpack/Chaos Scatter PLUS I have a whole course for car rendering on my Patreon, so I don't think there would be a whole lot to add. If you wanna know right now how it's done I recommend to check out those videos first as those are the same techniques.
@@JonasNoell i want to see how did you do set dressing for the environment
@@anony124 As said there are lot of tutorials on this already on my channel + a breakdown for the Endless Engines Scene.
@@JonasNoellwill check them out thx!
@@JonasNoell If you could please focus on the animation side of things (settings for flicker-free render, things like motion blur for objects in the scene, tricky for tires), that would be great, because these weren't covered extensively in your tutorials yet.
Thank you very much for this video. Could you please show how to correctly save and export the rendered images and bring them in let's say After Effects to preserve the correct look achieved in 3ds max ? This is the most difficult task I faced when using ACEScg workflows and compositing before the 2024 3ds max implementation (everything looked good inside 3ds max but after exporting images were totally wrong). Thank you again.
I have a video about AE + ACES
@@JonasNoell thank you Jonas, I watched that video but struggled with the end result, I'll take another look, maybe I missed something. Thank you.
The problem with changing color space workflow is:
1. It's not simple enough
2. The benefits for a lot of users are non existent
Don't get me wrong, I want to do it "the proper way" by switching to an advanced color space workflow like ACEScg, but I get nightmares just thinking about explaining that workflow, and why we should use it, to my colleagues.
My personal view is: If noone requires you to use it then I wouldn't make the change right now. It's mainly for bigger teams or studios with a whole pipeline setup in ACES where all departments can work with the same colormanagement consistently through different applications. ACES is right now more tedious to work with and it is not a magical button that will make all your renderings nicer. However there is a big interesting in the topic in general, no matter if bigger studio, individual freelancers or hobbyists.
Hi Jonas, thank you for the overview! Do you know if any correction needs to be made to materials using a vertex colour map in the diffuse channel? The vertex colours look different after switching to ACES and I'm not yet sure if it's to be expected. Any further info much appreciated!
Oh good question. Actually I guess it would need to be converted as it doesn't go the normal way through the material editor. I would try to put a VRayOCIO node in front of the vertex color and try out which way they would show correctly. But if that doesn't work I guess the best would be to ask in the Chaos Forums as this is a quite specialized question and I'm not that deep into the whole ACES and conversion stuff.
@@JonasNoell Thanks for your suggestion! That was the first thing I tried but I couldn't get it to match despite trying a range of the most logical inputs/outputs for the conversion. I asked about it on the Autodesk forums and they confirmed vertex colours aren't yet supported from their end so perhaps that's why. Might be worth asking on the Chaos forums as you mentioned. Cheers!
I just need a script that can properly convert vray materials maps to proper settings for aces. With fast turnaround and hundreds or thousands of maps using model libraries its impossible to convert everything manually.
vray converter from corona to vray is so bad that half the time it places reflections on 100%, glossiness to zero and bump to 100%. I might be wishing too much for them to have a converter for aces maps that have already been plugged in correctly.
Yeah it’s a pain that’s why I also stick with my sRGB workflow for now. There were some (paid) scripts out there that can switch your shaders and maps to Aces but I forgot what was the name. But I’m sure you can find it, they exist. Don’t rely on the native built in solutions, last time I checked it wasn’t really helpful in that regard…
Such a shame that they didn't implement that Automatic bitmap colorspace assignment rules...
Would save so much time on converting scenes... :/
The weird thing is that it sometimes is implemented and sometimes not from my testing. There seems to be no logic behind it. I even recorded a video about it, you can check it out if you are interested: www.jonasnoell.com/downloads/vray/noNametag_issue.mp4
But I found it to be too complicated to implement it in my tutorial and I would just recommend to nametag or manually define everything and then you are on the safe side always as demonstrated in this tutorial here.
@@JonasNoell Oh my god haha, yeah thats not very useful.
I actually started that thread on the chaos forums about the topic of Automatic bitmap colorpspace assignment and i have seen all your comments back and forth there. Been to caught up in my graduation project to respond to the thread though.
I really hope they would just give us the option to assume sRGB primaries instead of ACEScg
@@emilcgi4148 From what I read betweem the lines there it seems to be coming in upcoming releases, so fingers crossed :-)
@bron lebron Yeah from my perspective that would also be the best default behavior but the guys at Chaos seem to disagree with it and default everything to the colorspace selected in the rendersettings 🙂
Is this a joke?
What exactly?
If you don't know about the color management issues or know a better way doing it then yes it's a joke
Can you make a video for Aces in Corona Render ?
I don't use Corona, but the entire logic how images should be interpreted would be the same. It's just the question where you push which button which should be easy to find out.