Using a linear workflow always requires some gamma correction somewhere. If its within a maya shader network then you have some choices. The most obvious is maya's standard gammaCorrect node.
If you have maya2008 or 2009 then there is also mentalray's mip_gamma_gain node (which is hidden by default, but is easy to expose).
These two nodes perform the same basic function, with a few differences.
Maya's standard gammaCorrect enables independant gamma control of the three color channels.
While mr's mip_gamma_gain offers the simplicity of a single value gamma and throws in a gain control and a reverse switch for inverting the gamma value (saves you having to get the calculator to figure out the inverse of 2.2).
Until very recently, I had always used maya's gammaCorrect. And for one reason only - I like its colorful and meaningful hypershade swatch because it is easy to see in a busy hypershade window.
mentalRaySwatchGen
Now I'm starting to use mip_gamma_gain instead because it occured to me that I can modify mentalrayCustomNodeClass.mel ( in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\scripts\others) and get it to display a swatch that has one of those updating shader balls. That means I can see the actual result of the gamma change.
Although it makes the gamma nodes harder to find in the hypershade window, I'm finding the visual feedback useful.
If you want to try this, make a copy of mentalrayCustomNodeClass.mel into your local scripts folder and edit your local copy. The file has an obvious structure, so look for the "Internal MentalRay Nodes" section and add these lines after it.
if ($nodeType == "mip_gamma_gain" )
return "rendernode/mentalray/material:shader/surface:swatch/mentalRaySwatchGen";
You should also comment out the original reference to mip_gamma_gain.
A few weeks ago I saw this thread on cgtalk where Matt Estela offered a workaround for the slowness that we experience when using the hypershade when complex shaders or shaders with large file textures are involved. The update lag seems worse if some of the new mia shaders are involved. Matt's workaround is to simply disable the thumbnail updates while you are changing attribute values and to re-enable the updates again later when its more convenient.
I spent some time modifying a maya2008 sp1 mel script called hyperShadePanel.mel to add Matt's suggested workaround to a new button. Its the one with the little green shader ball icon in the center collumn as shown here
You can use it to toggle thumbnail updates on and off. You'll get one of those purple warnings in the info window to tell you the update state has changed.
You can download my modified version with the button icons from my downloads page. Put hyperShadePanel.mel in your local scripts folder and the xpm files in your icons folder and you'll get the new button when you restart maya.
Download here.
I previously uploaded an earlier mod version soon after reading the cgtalk post, but the button behavior was slightly awkward. This has been corrected now, so this note is for anybody who tried it before - its better now.
I've been playing with the new maya 2008 ext 2 muscle system. The old ext 1 muscles are now refered to as "simple" so I was not surprised at the apparant complexity of the ext 2 Muscle Creator UI. It's going to take some getting used to.
One thing that bugged me right from the start was the size of the frames in the lower half of the "Edit" tab of the UI. The default muscles have 5 basic controls but the frame only shows 2 and you need to scroll to get to the others, as you can see in this snapshot of part of the UI
I found this to be a major stumbling block as I tried to navigate my way around the various muscle cross-section curves and controls.
To make it easier I had to edit cMuscleCreatorUI.mel and now the same part of the UI looks like this
This makes it much easier to find things.
You can get my modified cMuscleCreatorUI.mel from the downloads page. It's not quite perfect though. I struggle a bit with the mel for formLayout. If you collapse one of the other tabs in the UI those fields will revert to their smaller size. To get them back again you have to close and reopen the UI. Oh well. Better than nothing.
Downloads it here.
