2024 Color Picker

[open-range]

The color picker in Max 2024 has changed. It's driving me kind of mental. 

Selecting the top buttons Scene or Display is confusing. Regardless of which is selected the spinners do not seem to work independent from each other. For instance, adjust value spinner and then saturation spinner gets changed also. Certain values will not stay put. Like Saturation will accept 188 and 255 but not anything in between. Weird and frustrating.

Does anyone know a way to get the old simpler and better (imo) color picker back in Max 2024?

[mar_piotrowski]

looks like you are trying to input display referred values into VRayMtl.

[inafaracutieiT9P25]

mar.piotrowski, do you have any solution to this issue, or you are just trying to have a conversation?

[mar_piotrowski]

there is no issue to have a solution for. colour picker was fixed not broken.

[inafaracutieiT9P25]

Cool man, I'm glad you resolved all our questions. If its fine for you then it should be fine for all of us. Now where is that button so we can click solved! on this thread so we can all get back to rendering.......

[mar_piotrowski]

this is the button. and this is where you input color values into 3dsMax.

[clambert3QNH2]

The topic of this thread is the Display side not working.  You know this, so please find something better to do than troll people on Autodesk forums.

[open-range]

Please see Message #53 and  #54 above in this thread. Cuneyt Ozdas - The AutoDesk Lead Developer of the new color picker explains that they are aware it is not working correctly and is asking for help with testing to se if there any more issues with it that need to be fixed.

[mar_piotrowski]

I did read the thread.

How I see it he (the dev) politely and patiently explained that there is nothing to make fuss about. again: fixed not broken. even took the time to record the explainer video.

somebody mentioned here that colour picker works “as expected” with colour management set to unmanaged or gamma 1.0 - do you agree with that?

[open-range]

“While we are on it may I ask you guys a favor:”

they r still working on it cause it is not fixed.

“Can you please test the color picker in 2024.2 like crazy and let us know if there are any other issues with that. The more people pound on it, the better chance that we'll find remaining issues (if any) that this precision and resolution increase push may have uncovered. “

there is at least the issue we are discussing, can you find any other issues?

[open-range]

Re color Management Settings. I claim no expertise and have not tried the new 3DS Max default OCIO color management. I have read on Vray Forum of folks having problems with that.

I am using the Legacy Gamma and that has always been good. Goes back to the older "linear workflow" strategy.

It may work to use  un-manged color space in order to get the color picker to work correctly with Vray. That would not be an effective solution for me and I'm glad the Adesk people are working on fixing this.

It took a while and a lot of people to post but ultimately the Lead Developer explained the issue and said it would get fixed. All seem to agree that once fixed this is going to be a great improvement. Looking forward to it very much.

Until then, using Max 2023. Not angry, never was (maybe some initial frustration vs anger). I understand that the software is going thru constant improvement and it's complex (way beyond my capabilities).

[mar_piotrowski]

let me try one more time.
even without 2024.2 update I see no issues with color picker. the glich with jumpy Display spinners should not bother anyone using any display transform as this should be treated as read-only values. You mentioned you are familiar with using VRayColor map - Scene part of color picker is mostly replacing its functionality, how is it not clear?

Display values will change slightly when you specify another display device in colour management options - are you trying to tell us you will adjust all the materials when you change the display?
Display referred colour is not proper colour input for a rendering engine (and those rgb values from paint manufacturer’s side are not accurate data for Diffuse Color in VRay). it is clearly described: “Display”. This is not your 2023 colour picker input - Scene section is.

[clambert3QNH2]

Just ignore him.  Don't feed the troll.

[open-range]

sorry and not trying to frustrate you but :

With a Vray Material click on the black swatch in the Reflection Parameter. Set the value to 5,5,5. Close the color picker. Re-open the color picker -It now shows value of 0,0,0. That makes setting the reflection amount and then coming back to adjust it later a big problem. You have to write down or remember where it was or else start from scratch again. This reset to 0,0,0 is true for values all the way up to the value of 21 as shown in the posts above.

Also, the Adesk developer has shown that when this is fixed entering in RGB values or Hex # from, for instance a paint color swatch, will now, once this is fixed, show that color vs something else. That has been historically a problem area and it's going to be great once this gets fixed to where we can use it.

[open-range]

"Just ignore him.  Don't feed the troll."

I can tell you he is not a troll. He is an accomplished Vray user with a lot of expertise. He has been helpful to me and others on the Vray forum many times.

[mar_piotrowski]

all good.
ok - so legacy Gamma Workflow 2.2 color management in 2024 (Display shows 8bit value of Scene after transfer function, gamma 2.2 in this case):

edit: math was quite wrong - read as 255*(5/255)^2.2.        [facepalm]

entering value of 5,5,5 in Display for Reflection Color in VRayMtl. this would be the same as entering 5^(1/2.2)=2.078  (so 2) in 3dsMax2023 - specular reflectance of 0.0078. (classic PBR shader has spec. reflectance of 1.0 (100%) and ior value that describes the "strength" of this reflection). The developer that mentioned that VRay does not care much for values like that was right - check the render posted here with a few black balls with extremely low Diffuse and Reflection - on the second (or third) ball you can see VRay's Reflection Cutoff - a point where VRay starts calculating said reflection. But if you still need a material like that - enter 0.008 in Scene. And if 0.0078 is critical: add one decimal space precision in General settings and enter 0.0078.

Sure, there are glitches with some values but nobody noticed because it would be quite difficult to encounter material that shows it.

By default, VRayColor can go as low as 0.001*0.001. Not that Vray would care obviously. Color picker glitchy still but the map will hold value of 0.001 or whatever else you need.

Diffuse Color: you enter low value in Display - it jumps to 21. this is 4 in old money. 4/255=0.0156
1.6% - if you're not rendering commercial for Vantablack - you will be fine. Vantablack - VRayColor map.
at this level of diffuse refl. what you will notice is not ideal energy preservation in VRayMtl and not 1% up or down.
also for some reason Max jumps here to 0.004 and not 0.016 (and renders it correctly as 0.004) so Vantablack or not - you're good. I use 3% for black matte paint to get albedo of around 4%. everything below 2% Diffuse is man-made black magic I guess.

to sum up - this was easy to miss. you need pretty special case to notice it as precise values in VRay were always done by the book via VRayColor map.

a very welcome upgrade to Max in general, some little bugs, nothing deal breaking.
use Scene and just update thinking in 8bit to thinking in float. life is easier when 18% is 0.18 and not 46.

[cuneyt.ozdas]

---

@mar_piotrowski wrote:

entering value of 5,5,5 in Display for Reflection Color in VRayMtl. this would be the same as entering 5^(1/2.2)=2.078  (so 2) in 3dsMax2023 - specular reflectance of 0.0078.

Your analysis is pretty good but needs some correction in that math (corrected math supports your conclusions even more):

5 in 2024 display value would correspond to 0 in 2023:

255*(5/255)^2.2 = 0.04 = ~0 

Similarly 21 in 2024 corresponds to 1 in 2023
255*(21/255)^2.2 = 1.04 = ~1

That's why 17 becomes 21 because they are both quantized to 1
255*(17/255)^2.2 = 0.65 = ~1

Thus the scene reflectance values are even lower (5 -> 0.017%, 17 -> 0.25%,  21 -> 0.41%) than what you calculated (all less than Vantablack's reported 1% reflectivity which is ~31 in new display referred values). Having that said the quantization is a problem in some cases as non-zero  values -regardless how low in reflectivity they are- becoming zero may change the look. For now users should be careful not to dial anything below 15.

Since the new OCIO based system is pretty powerful and flexible, it's possible to emulate the color picker behavior of 2023 with that to a degree. If you change the color management settings as in the attached image, you can (almost) get the behavior of the 2023 color picker. This may even be a substitute for for the gamma mode in some cases. If for nothing else, this will give you an idea about what is (and was) happening under the hood.

[cuneyt.ozdas]

For comparison 

This is how you can emulate 2023 gamma mode behavior with 2024 OCIO mode.

and this is how you can emulate 2024 gamma mode behavior with 2024 OCIO mode.

[open-range]

Oh man, this is making my head spin. 

I want to be confident I am using the correct color management settings. Not sure if I want to emulate something or not.

I want to be sure if I change from the Gamma mode to the OCIO that would not whack out all the materials and etc in my libraries. Also if I open an older scene that comes back for revision I need it to render the same.

This OCIC is probably best for a separate topic.

[cuneyt.ozdas]

Feel free to ignore all of the math, discussions of the internal working or emulations above. They are there as a proof for the below short answer:

• 2024 color picker has the same color fidelity as the 2023 picker with VRay materials, not less.
• 2024 color picker has the same or higher color fidelity than the 2023 picker with built-in textures and materials.
• 2024 color picker is now using the World-standard 8-bit sRGB values; thus, it can interoperate with other applications using the same RGB numbers.
• Old scenes will open and render as before because the renderers use the scene referred values, not display referred values.

In other words, as long as you do these, you're good:

• Don't type any value lower than 15 in the display field in the color picker. Values lower than 15 would be the same as typing 0 in the 2023 picker.
• Safely ignore the number differences you may get when you re-open the same color in the picker. The missing intermediate intensities were not available to you in 2023 or before anyhow. 

Hope this clarifies the situation a bit more.

[open-range]

Thank you for your continuing help. 

As it is there are spinners that go to zero but going below 15 should not be done. Presumably that will be fixed?

If I merge into the scene an older asset from my library that has a vray material with reflection = 5,5,5, then if I click on the reflection black swatch it will open the color picker and show 0,0,0?

Is the new color management system tied to any of this? I was unaware (just learned from this discussion) that the new ICOC color management system was even available. I checked and my Max 2024  is set (not by me) to “legacy gamma”

Thanks again for your help!