Creating Believable Materials - Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp - page 194

With the Linear workflow option disabled, however, you can see on the right-hand
side of the image the incredible difference that we get in terms of light bounce and
overall brightness in the scene.
This difference occurs because with the Linear workflow option disabled, V-Ray is
now interpreting light interaction with the current material settings in roughly the
same manner as a real camera would if we were photographing a physical environ-
ment under the same lighting conditions, with the same surface reflectance values
as our scene materials and using the same exposure settings on our camera.
The question we need to answer then, is do we proceed with the Linear workflow op-
tion on or off? Both approaches have their good and bad points, and so neither one
can be said to be better or worse than the other. Of course, most artists will either
have or will develop a personal preference for a workflow that works for them, but
this shouldn't be confused with one approach being intrinsically better than another.
What can be said, however, is that the choice we make here will most definitely im-
pact the workflow that we use from this point forward, particularly with regard to post-
production operations. Now, my personal preference is to render 16- or 32-bit float-
ing point images out of V-Ray and then take care of both gamma correction and color
grading in post-production.