This is a collection of tutorials designed to complement my text Introduction to a Gamma Corrected Workflow for CG Artists (which is still a work in progress).
The topic at hand is how to correctly work with gamma correction when rendering in Autodesk Maya. The advantage of a gamma corrected workflow is that it will better allow for lighting practices more in agreement with the laws of physics. If your aim is photo-realism, a gamma corrected workflow will more easily accommodate you than the traditional way of doing things. Focus here will be on pratice rather than theory, and I have no intention of explaining the particulars of all relevant gamma issues. These tutorials are more about the how than the why, and depending on your familiarity with these matters you might find them somewhat confusing. If that proves to be the case, please refer to Introduction to a Gamma Corrected Workflow for CG Artists for a more thorough examination of the subject.
If you have found this page by way of a search engine, odds are your search keywords were "linear workflow". This is the more popular name for the topic dealt with in the following tutorials, but it is not an entirely appropriate one. The term Linear Workflow actually refers to a method of working where you avoid gamma encoding image files in your pipeline and instead make a point of operating on linear light data. Although this is a related issue, it is not exactly what we will be most concerned with here. In the context of 3D rendering, the main problem is more related to the fact that rendered images are already linear and always need gamma correction whenever displayed on an monitor. Dealing with this is more suitably called a Gamma Corrected Workflow, and this is the name that will be used throughout these tutorials.
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