From the course: 3ds Max: Hard Surface Modeling

A quick word on gamma and unit settings - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max: Hard Surface Modeling

A quick word on gamma and unit settings

- [Narrator] Although the handling of both system and file gamma options have in recent years become greatly simplified, there is still a chance, if we have our copy of 3ds Max setup in a non-default way, that we could encounter this gamma mismatch warning dialogue as we work with the provided scene files for this course. And the dialogue is simply 3ds Max's way of telling us that the gamma settings saved in the scene file differ from the settings 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 to do is select the Adopt the File's Gamma and LUT settings option, and all will be fine. If we should, by mistake, go ahead and select the wrong option here, we don't need to panic as switching gamma options inside 3ds Max is a simple and straightforward process. All we do is come to the Customize Menu and select the Preferences option. And then in the Gamma and LUT tab of the dialogue 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. Now another warning dialogue that we could run into in Max is one connected to both our system and display unit setup. As a general rule we typically model all of our scenes to scale using the metric system. Specifically, in the case of this course, centimeters, given the small scale of some of the objects with which we will be working. If you then have 3ds Max setup to use its unit default you will run into this particular error. Thankfully the fix is also quite simple as all we need to do is adopt the scene files unit scale. 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. And 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, then we will need to open up the unit settings dialogue go into the System Unit setting and 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 follow through on these instructions everything from the exercise files download should work just fine for us.

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