From the course: Animating in 3ds Max: Constraints, Controllers, and Wire Parameters

File gamma and unit handling - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: Animating in 3ds Max: Constraints, Controllers, and Wire Parameters

Start my 1-month free trial

File gamma and unit handling

- [Instructor] If we have our copy of 3ds Max set up in a non-default way, there is a chance that we could encounter the Gamma Mismatch warning dialog that we see here as we work through the provided scene files for this course. The dialog is simply 3ds Max's way of telling us that the gamma settings saved in the scene file differ from those currently at work in the application itself. To make certain that what you see in 3ds Max as you work matches the visual presentation found in these videos, which have all been created using 3ds Max's default gamma settings, all we need do is select the adopt the files gamma and LUT settings option and everything will be fine. If we should by mistake, however, go ahead and select the wrong option, no need to panic, as switching gamma options inside 3ds Max is a simple and straightforward process. All we need do is come to the Customize menu, select the Preferences option and then in the Gamma and LUT tab of the dialog set gamma to be enabled, make sure the gamma value is set at 2.2 and also ensure that both boxes in the Materials and Color section are checked. Another warning dialog that we could run into is one connected to both our system and display unit setup. As a general rule, we typically model all of our scene files here to scale using the metric system, typically centimeters given the smaller scale of some of the objects that we create. If you have 3ds Max set up to use its unit default then, you will run into this particular error. Thankfully the fix is again simple as all we need is choose the adopt the file's unit scale option. Now, unlike the gamma option that we have already looked at, the consequences of making the wrong choice here can be a bit more significant as adopting the rescale objects option can oftentimes lead to some fairly serious scene scaling anomalies. To reiterate then, the option we always want to choose while working with the scene files for this course will be adopt the file's unit scale. Once we have done that of course we will need to remember that when working on projects of our own, assuming we don't want to work in the metric system, we will need to open up the unit settings dialog, go into the system unit setting and then switch that back to using 3ds MAx's default of inches, also setting the display units to whatever option we are most comfortable working with. If we carefully follow through on these instructions, then everything from the exercise files download should work just fine for us.

Contents