aiImage won't change Color Space from sRGB to Raw

[cappellojuan]

Hi, I'm super new to Maya and I'm taking an online course (Elementza in case you're familiar with it). I've modeled a couple of objects and I am now learning the basics of how to render the scene using Arnold. I set up some lights, some materials (aiStandardSurface) and I'm trying to apply a normal map to the plastic surface using aiImage + aiNormalMap + aiTriplanar nodes connected to the material as you can see in the screenshots.

In the course video (and almost everywhere I've been able to find online) the aiImage is set to Color Space: Raw. However, I can't seem to change the default sRGB value, not only can't I change it to Raw, I can't change it to anything! As soon as I choose a different color space I get an error saying: Autodesk/Maya2023/scripts/startup/colorSpaceProceadures.mel like 416 setAttr: No object matches name: aiImage2.viewNameUsed

I need some help because as I said I'm very new to all of this and I don't know how to fix it, I've been googling for days now and in almost all videos or sources I've found people seem to be able to just change the Color Space without any issues.

Here are a few screenshots of the issue. In the last one it may seem like it allowed me to change it to Raw but I get the error and after I click away the field reverts back to sRGB.

Versions I'm using:

- Maya 2023

- Arnold plugin is version 5.1.1 (Maya 2023 installation comes with Arnold 5.1.0 so after reading this thread about the Color Space drop down menu missing I manually updated to the latest v5.1.1 because I didn't have the drop down menu either)

[cappellojuan]

How to reproduce the issue:

I also tried doing this from scratch: Open Maya, create a cube, give it aiStandardSurface material, add an aiSkydomeLight (lowered the color slider to grey to reduce the amount of light a bit) and an aiAreaLight in front of the cube (tinted red with its Exposure crancked up a bit to around 10-15).

The Arnold render window renders the cube with the grey background and red color on light on it. I then added the following nodes in the Hypershade editor: aiImage, aiNormalMap and aiTriplanar, I connected each the same way I did in my project:

1st. aiImage out color -> to aiNomalMap input

2nd. aiNormalMap out value -> to aiTriplanar input

3rd. aiTriplanar out color -> to the aiStandardSurface normal camera

I loaded a normal map file to the aiImage and tried to change the sRGB color space to Raw... I get the exact same error and can't change sRGB to anything else. Since I can pretty much reproduce it from scratch, is this a bug? Can anyone at least test this and tell me if they can change the color space from sRGB to Raw doing this with a regular cube?

[cappellojuan]

I decided to go ahead and reinstall Maya, I'm not sure but I think it may have fixed it. I did the following:

1. Uninstalled Maya 2023

2. Deleted the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Arnold\maya2023 folder as well

3. Rebooted the PC (just in case).

4. Using the Autodesk desktop utility I reinstalled Maya 2023.

5. While reinstalling it, it prompted me to choose whether I wanted to install Arnold and pymel, the other 3 modules (Bifrost, USD, and Substance) were detected as I had not deleted those folders.

6. After that I opened Maya 2023 and checked in the plugins manager (mtoa version is 5.1.0).

7. I then opened the same scene I had before, changed nothing at all and tried to manually change the Color Space field (in 'Extra Attributes' as the drop down menu doesn't show up in 5.1.0) from sRGB to Raw, and this time it didn't give me any errors.

On the one hand I'm inclined to think this works, on the other hand... I don't see much difference in the render between sRGB for the normal map and Raw, and I don't know if there should or shouldn't be a difference between both.

The main reason I wanted to use Raw in the first place is because as you can see in my original post the plastic material in the camera (the dark surfaces) has some weird artifacts, I checked with the course professor and he pointed out the cause probably was the aiImage not being set to Raw, but now that I don't see any difference between sRGB and Raw I'm more confused than before. O.o

I'm leaving this info in case:

A. it helps someone with the same problem.

B. perhaps someone with enough knowledge can explain these issues to me? (the root cause for those artifacts, and why I wasn't able to change the color space with the latest Arnold 5.1.1 version, perhaps I am missing something? if not that seems like a huge bug to be honest).

My conclusion is that while Arnold v5.1.1 brings back the color space drop down menu (and probably fixes a lot of stuff), this particular issue seems broken... or perhaps this has nothing to do with Arnold and it's a Maya issue, who knows. (Would be nice to get some feedback from someone from Autodesk)

[cappellojuan]

Ok so I did a complete clean uninstall of Maya 2023, all the plugins that are also installed with it (like Bifrost, Substance, USD, Arnold, etc), and then manually deleted the remaining folders. Then I rebooted my PC and installed Maya 2023 without Arnold enabled during the installation process. I then installed Arnold v5.1.1 manually from the download link provided by ashley handscomb retallack in this thread.

The color space field will just not work for me. I have no idea what's going on, as I am a student and I'm fairly new to Maya, but I can't figure out why it won't work while lee griggsGTKJS (in the same thread I linked to above) reported it works fine for him. Am I missing something here? The installation seems pretty straightforward, and as far as I can check everything seems to be installed correctly.