Gamma, White-Levels and Tone-Mapping?

[Edwiersma]

Hey,

I was making some renders and when I start playing with Gamma, White-Levels and Tone-Mapping in render processing so they get rendered out like that and I dont need to change them anymore.

Now for example the defaults:
Gamma: 1,6.
White-Levels: 1.
Tone-Mapping 0%
http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx227/Edwiersma/Myst%20Related/Test/tonemapping.jpg

Now I enhanced them a bit, the render alreayd looks alot better but are there like default settings that work very well or is this set to the scene's mood ect.?

Enhanced Settings:
Gamma: 1,0.
White-Levels: 0,5.
Tone-Mapping 0%
http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx227/Edwiersma/Myst%20Related/Test/Pilar01-1.jpg

[Crispy4004]

Instead of testing random Gamma values, look into linear workflow with your rendering engine. It allows you to create images with the widest exposure range possible, which by default most rendering engines don't give you. For instance in Maya MR if you just hit the render button without a Lens shader with a Gamma of 2.2 and textures gamma corrected to .455 (sRGB to linear color space), you'll get ugly clamped shadows and highlights. In other words, if you don't use Linear workflow, all your renders will have a distinctive "CG" look to them unless you do heavy touch-up in Photoshop, but even then that is just trying to fix an already broken image.