The tonemapping defaults

[J the Ninja]

At the moment, LuxRender defaults to the Reinhard tonemapper and sets the LDR clamp mode to "lum". Ostensibly, this is to mimic an auto-exposure camera, except the auto-linear+"cut" combo actually behaves much more like an auto-exposure camera than Reinhard does. Reinhard is a bit more complex than that and often confuses new users with its behavior. We even have an entry in the FAQ for users who are surprised by how it reacts to changes in relative light brightness. And the behavior of the "lum" clamp mode is just plain weird, IMO.

I've been using auto-linear+cut as my defaults for awhile now (by setting them in my startup.blend file for lb25) and am beginning to wonder if it would be best to change the actual defaults used in the core and what the exporters set. So, I'd like to get people thoughts on two things:

1. Changing the default tonemapping kernel in the core and exporters to auto-linear instead of Reinhard.
2. Changing the default LDR clamp mode, again for both the core and exporters, to cut (clip individually) instead of lum (preserve luminosity)

[Abel]

I'm all for auto-linear as I do agree it will probably make the life of some new users easier.

Regarding the clamping I have no strong feelings; in my scenes I have never felt the need to change it from the default but that also means I haven't observed the behaviour of the other options very well.

[SATtva]

Agree with J the Ninja on both points.

[J the Ninja]

To update everyone on this, the core parser and LuxBlend25 have both been updated for this, (auto linear/cut is now the default). For the other exporters, should we just pass around who this task is assigned to? http://www.luxrender.net/mantis/view.php?id=1141

[J the Ninja]

Oh, and a related note: the gui still seems to be showing the old defaults when idle or loading a scene?