Here's a tip from the stuff I see at work in outsourcing: look into physically based shaders and get comfortable working with them and their texture types. Linear workflows will also get more important. I just hope more tools will support all this soon.
IMO you can just skip keeping your original meshes intact and rely on skinwrap to get the job done these days. no need for a linear way of working at all unless blendshapes/morph targets are involved. and even then, skinwrap can save your day. :)
For very simple edits you can use VirtualDub. Has a lot of features but might be a little iffy to work around on. It doesn't seem like a conventional non-linear video editor but it will get the job done and has a very versatile encoding feature set
Oh, yeah. I tried 'bang me with', trying to get something vaguely pornographic, and got apocalyptic instead: "Bang me with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that dwell on the earth's surface in the form of a linear Transformation." LOVE. IT. /jzero
If each material is using a different map, click the options button and make sure sRGB is enabled for both albedo maps. If you accidentally loaded the albedo into the normal map or gloss slot it may have been flagged as linear space (sRGB off).
Use Edit Mesh > Add Divisions, set the 'Add divisions' radio button to 'Linearly', and change the U or V values to 3 in the linear controls. It'll be one or the other you'll need. Select your face and go. Easy, 2 seconds setup.
And then the cinematic fades out ... the camera pulls back ... and it's time to push that one analog stick forward, making that girl run down a linear corridor like a retarded 12 year old with a stick up her ass. (unless proven otherwise :D )
I wrote a FPS control script for Unity particles, since unity by defaults hard codes a smooth linear interpolation to all the particle effect stuff. Easy to set the frame rate now... Works on any and all particle systems. :D WHOO!
I'm going to guess you're using color management on this pass without linear space. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-115A5BCB-5B99-41A5-BA1C-D055E7068157-htm.html
If anything they should be pushing their date back because of GW2. I think when people start playing GW2 and realize how good it is they'll think twice about ever going back to WoW's repetitive design, mechanics, and linear gear grind.