Shadow Export

[gazm]

Hi. Sorry if I have posted this in the wrong place.

When rendering a Pyro sim with Mantra the render window shows a nice shadow. When I save that image as a file or render out a sequence the shadow is gone? This is the same for depth map and ray trace.

Am i missing something here, I've tried playing with all the settings but still fail garner to correct look.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, it must just be a check box somewhere, surely?

Thanks

P.S.

RenderWithin - as it appears within Houdini

RenderWithout - as it appears when an exr file is saved and imported into phototshop and a black background added

LightSettings - my shadow settings

[Netvudu]

Are you sure this is not coming from Photoshop Exposure settings, when working with a 16bit or 32bit color depth image?

[gazm]

By messing around with the levels in Photoshop I managed to get something similar to the original (though missing a lot of colour range I fear), but I am only using Photoshop as an example for help. I am using Nuke to composite my scene and have the same problem.

No matter what image format I export it as, the problem persists.

[edward]

Photoshop is assuming that your floating point image is linear and displaying it with a gamma (2.2-ish). Houdini on the other hand, doesn't make the same assumptions and is displaying it without color correction. To see it the same way in Houdini as Photoshop, try putting in a 2.2 gamma in the Houdini color settings.

[gazm]

Ah thanks, adjusting the gamma as well as the light levels seems to have solved it. Shadows appear be much more of a fine art in Houdini than Maya.