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I have attached a comparison between a LW and Kray render....
the LW render is preserving the Green absorption color in the dielectric material...while Kray is not, well not very much at least
Does Kray not respect absorption settings for dielectric?

Also, no matter what I try in terms of tonemapping, I cannot get the Kray render to look like the LW renderer in terms of color balance and level of detail on the back wall....i have tried QLF as well with no real help...
Thanks

mdharrington wrote: the LW render is preserving the Green absorption color in the dielectric material...while Kray is not, well not very much at least
Does Kray not respect absorption settings for dielectric?

Dielectric is great but is not supported fully by Kray (still is some problems)...this absorption should work but with stronger value.

Also, no matter what I try in terms of tonemapping, I cannot get the Kray render to look like the LW renderer in terms of color balance and level of detail on the back wall....i have tried QLF as well with no real help...
Thanks

"Kray render to look like the LW renderer"IMHO You should start think opposite: "LW render should look like the Kray render" Lightwave has old engine and very bad tonemaping...and You should learn how deal with REAL tonemaping in Kray, where You have FULL support for LWF,Gamma, Exponential and very important BLENDING. Do not forget also about real and great Photon Mapping in Kray which is very flexible.

yes...you are right of course...kray is a vastly superior render...
the issue i have with the above image however is the colour balance with the kray render vs the lightwave render...
this is a timelapse controlled by Dpont physical sky with the sun spot modifier....and as you see the kray result looks much more saturated in the red channel....any idea as to what would be causing this, as the only difference right now is the renderer
And my experiments at tone mapping this were more an attempt to correct the colour balance issue.

On the subject of tonemapping, can the same results be achieved by rendering to a linear format and grading externally?

Thanks for the help

You can use LINEAR, same as in LW. Also people use LINEAR in V-ray(but in V-ray You have Linear Multiply which is quite new tonemap)
With saturation problem is that: in LW when You use Linear tonemap, You will get normal render (but this does not mean is correct!) Linear means NO TONEMAP...so setup of colors must be a bit stronger. LWF and exponential make saturation of colors more.
Why are different between LW and Kray. In LINEAR mode should be same render (of course remember about that in Kray You have more bounce lights then in LW, so photons "collect" more information about colors.
IMHO be careful with saturate colors in Kray a specially when You use LWF and Exponential. Second of all: do not use more then 10 bounce lights (recurse 10), this is enough.