Linear Workflow problems

[Nibbler]

I didn't read it yet but Robert Nederhorst has 16 pages pdf about linear workflow: http://throb.net/articles/

[anim]

I'm used to work in linear workflow I find it very straightforward in Houdini

if you use RAT files (since it has many benefits) you can make sure they are linear when converting them, then you don't have to worry about changing anything and houdini gamma settings will take care of it

if you don't use RATs, then one Pow VOP per texture is not a problem, especially not for mantra since even if there was gamma settings on Texture VOP, mantra would compute it anyway

I understand the convenience of automatic guessing in softwares(float-linear, integer-sRGB), but that's not always true and it's better to be aware of the process and choose knowingly than let software guess wrongly, so personally I don't see this as necessary feature, however gamma input on texture VOP wouldn't hurt

[Peter Quint]

I suspect any automatic method would run into problems fairly quickly. If I remember right Softimage solves this by having the notion of clips - a sort of intermediate stage that allows you to specify how images will be converted.

While we are on the subject is there any simple way to adjust gamma as part of the process of converting an image to a rat file? I ended up using either cops, which is cumbersome, or a combination of imagemagick and iconvert which makes it a two step process. Have I missed some houdini specific command line option?

Edited December 16, 2012 by Peter Quint

[sanostol]

a option for gamma correction when converting to rat would be great with cmd would be great

[symek]

Have I missed some houdini specific command line option?

No, you haven't. Houdini's command lines tools do not allow to correct gamma on conversion, which is a bit of comic comment to this discussion. And to make it even funnier, it is a matter of 3 lines of code* to make it happen thanks to Houdini's toolkit.

* -

#include <IMG/IMG_File.h>
#include <CMD/CMD_Args.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
if (argc < 3) return 1;
CMD_Args args;
args.initialize(argc, argv);
args.stripOptions("g:");
IMG_FileParms *parms = new IMG_FileParms();
const char* gamma = args.argp('g');
if (gamma) parms->applyGamma(atof(gamma));
parms->setDataType(IMG_HALF);
const char *input_name = argv[argc-2];
const char *output_name = argv[argc-1];
IMG_File::copyToFile(input_name, output_name, parms);
delete parms;
return 0; } [/CODE]

[size=1]Maybe SESI don't have an access to HDK, like "hdk is for lamers, we do assembler only" ? [/size]