SgWRX

one of my complaints using mr sun, mr sky and mr physical sky (daylight) with log exposure control in max 9 and using FG is that everything seems washed out. i've been playing around today and i think one of the key elements is to adjust the mid-tones in the exposure control as well as the brightness/contrast.

for example, i re-rendered one of my scenes of a chilis restaurant. it called for a very light kind of lime green that was nearly white. in my initial render with FG only, standard exposure control settings, that green was for all practical purposes, white.

i turned off FG and turned on GI and rendered. nice rich colors and easily perceptible light green (called frost i think on sherwin williams website). of course shadows were very dark.

i dropped the brightness value in exp. ctl. to 50, increased contrast to 100 and turned on FG again. then i adjusted the mid-tones to 1.8 or 2. this seemed to keep the nice rich colors (red walls, light blue trim, rich stone material and yellow and green trim). even the sky was better (richer). without adjusting the mid-tones (just the brightness/contrast) the render was overly dark.

i just didn't pick up on this until now, the mid-tones adjustment. i've only read of brightness/contrast changes.

i know new versions of mr have a photographic control exposure adjustment so i'm not sure about that or whether the log exp ctl is still available?

the only thing i've run into is that i have to carefully make changes to prevent the shadows from being too dark. however, as the mr daylight setup is physically accurate it stands to reason that shadows will be darker when other elements are "exposed properly". tweaking the haze in the mr sky parameters goes towards simulating less direct light and more diffuse light, kind of like a cloudy day and making the shadows lighter. objects in direct sunlight are less bright compared to the diffuse light lighting up the shadows.

i'd love to see a direct comparison done between a scene lit with and HDR image and a scene lit with regular lights. as in photography, i think HDR images are ultimately not HDR but instead LDR. i think it comes down to what can be displayed on a monitor or in print. my point here is, i'll bet a scene lit with an HDR image can be simulated with exposure control settings and/or post processing. case in point my comments about dark shadows. if a shadow is really 5-stops below a neutral gray card exposed with the direct sunlight, and i make adjustments to brighten the shadows to say 2-stops below, but leave the exposure on everything else the same, i no longer have an HDR image. it's compressed dynamic range.

hm.

Adrian Bold

The washed-out MR issue can be fixed by applying a gamma-correct filter to each material affected. Since we use Maya, I'm not sure how to exactly tell you how to apply this in Max but im sure the theory is the same.

SgWRX

no, that's not the only solution.