New ACES Workflow in Cinema 4D 2023 and After Effects Beta
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- čas přidán 3. 08. 2024
- NOTE I should have mentioned this in the beginning, but this tutorial and way of working wouldn't really apply for individuals working within a true ACES pipeline with other people. This is for the freelancers and one-man-band types that have to deliver final products to clients or posting to social media. ALSO, these are very early days for OCIO in AE. So all of this is pretty basic and not fully functioning. I believe Adobe is aware of this and are working on updating this to an actual fully working system. Fingers crossed!
Now that Cinema 4D 2023 has implemented OpenColorIO & ACES and After Effects will soon be doing the same (OCIO has been added to the Beta version), I walk through what these changes mean for for our ACES workflow. (Sorry about the audio; I’m going to make it a point to actually learn how to do this properly)
00:00 Intro
00:59 C4D 2023 OCIO Settings
05:47 Exporting Raw EXRs
08:32 Exporting JPGs
09:32 Setting Up Textures in Redshift
12:01 After Effects Beta OCIO Setup v1.0.3
31:53 Maybe an Easier AE OCIO Setup?
38:00 Color Grading in LOG Gamma
44:46 ACES Transforms Only on Export
49:40 After Effects Beta ACES Version Options
57:05 Criticism of ACES and Potential Future Fixes
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If you're brand new to ACES and OCIO here are some good places to start learning about what all the fuss is about:
/// RESOURCES ///
Chris Brejon’s ACES Blog
chrisbrejon.com/cg-cinematogr...
Aces Central Online Community
community.acescentral.com/
/// RECOMMENDED TUTORIALS ///
Video Tech Explained - Color Spaces: Explained from the Ground Up
• Color Spaces: Explaine...
Video Tech Explained - What is Color Management?
• What is Color Manageme...
Video Tech Explained - What is Gamma Correction?
• What is Gamma Correcti...
Lego Movie Talk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKtF2...
InLightVFX’s Add VFX into Cinematic RAW+LOG Footage (the right way) | ACES Part 1
• Add VFX into Cinematic...
CZcams Video explaining gamma encoding:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zeat...
Andrey Lebrov’s Introduction to ACES
• Introduction to ACES |...
Greyscale Gorilla’s Why Cinema 4D Artists Should Care About ACES
• Why Cinema 4D Artists ... - Krátké a kreslené filmy
NOTE: I was wrong about Lumetri! Although it does work better with LOG, it really wants to be used on straight up video like REC709. Use Lumetri with caution! I wouldn't make any huge changes regarding exposure, shadows, blacks, contrast, etc. using that plugin. You're probably (maybe?) okay with white balance, tint, hue vs. curves, and some of the color wheel colors (but not the brightness sliders next to them). Oof. AE needs a new color grading plugin if they're wanting to do OCIO properly.
Hi Zak. Can you please make video about Fusion and Redshift. There is tons and tons videos about AE and Redshift, or another renderer, but very few about Fusion workflow.
For one or another reason many people prefer Fusion node workflow... or simply don't want to mess with Adobe.
However great video, as usual. Cheers
this was a great watch. learned so much - Thanks!
Thanks for putting in the work and for sharing your findings!
the tutorial we were waiting for 🙌
THANK GOD i was looking for something like this yesterday
Zak you are a godsend. Thank you!!
Hey Zak! Love the in depth explanation, would love a super quick video of just the bare basics of how you get your renders out of Redshift and into AE. Thanks for this video, helps so much!
Yeah, this is definitely a complex overview of the not-yet-ready After Effects OCIO Beta. I still use the production version of After Effects with the Fnord OCIO plugin, or Davinci Resolve, to do post work on my renders. My last ACES tutorial goes over that AE workflow.
super!!I just found out if there is a new lecture on aces today. I was waiting
Thank you!
Awesome thank you for deep explanation.
Thanks for watching!
Great tutor)
These are great tutorials on ACES, thank you, also working in ACES with AE seems to still be very confusing. I hope the new ACES workflow comes with updated 32 bit effects that aren't all 8 or 16bit as well
Yeah, agreed. Adobe stills has a long way to go for proper OCIO implementation. But I hope now that they've started on this journey it'll just be a matter of time before all of this gets simplified.
Hey I just updated my AE beta and I noticed the OCIO Config is now on ACES 1.2 in the Project Setting. But it seems like your workflow works still. And as always thanks for the tutorials! For me coming from CAD software into 3D (motion) design everything regarding color correction and color spaces in general is new and very confusing at times. But your videos help a lot !
Thanks for watching and glad it's helping! Yeah, there have been some updates to the AE Beta and I've been keeping my eyes on some things. They've added the display transforms in the Output Color tab of the Render Queue settings if you check the "Show All" box. But I've found that the color space is incorrectly assigned as "Rec.709 Gamma 2.4" for sRGB output. So to me it's still not worth using the Beta for ACES work. I'm still using the Fnord plugin in AE production version (or Davinci Resolve).
👍👍👍
I feel like a "tagging" system in AE would go a long way in helping the ACES workflow. If I could interpret all jpgs as SRGB or at least default to the embedded images color space it would already be so much better. Similar to the "Use OpenColorIO File Rules" that exists in Redshifts OCIO workflow.
This may be in the works.
42:54, you don't lose anything by switching between CG and CCT, they both use the AP1 primaries. The only difference is CG is linear and CCT has a toe in the black end, the primary conversion math is the same. Cullen Kelly adresses this in one of his talks about differences between AP0 and AP1.
@posebukse I may be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that the linear ACES (2065 and CG) were the only ones capable of the full 30+ stops of dynamic range. That the log curve of CCT or CC, while capable of still a ton of dynamic range, weren't 30+ stops. Yeah, the colors would be the same, but thought we'd lose luminance range in Log. Is that not true? Do we get all the 30 stops in CC and CCT?
This certainly is confusing. Thanks for trying to clear it up. I still can't figure out how to export my aces files into rec 709 so an editor can use them in premiere!
Great video, I'm unclear why in AE you turn off the built-in display color space convertor and do it separately in a layer? Seems to complicate unnecessarily? or is there a reason? Thanks
It really depends on your workflow. If you are just compositing a render together in AE then have to send off an EXR in ACEScg to a colorist or editor, using only the conversion in the composition window is a great way to preview your work in sRGB without actually converting anything. The drop down menu in the composition window is only for displaying raw data as sRGB (or P3 or whatever). No conversion is actually being done.
If you want to export your work in sRGB, you'll have to make that conversion. If we only use the drop down menu in the composition window that says "Display Color Space" without any OCIO Color Space Transform Effect then we won't be exporting in sRGB. We'd still be exporting in ACEScg. That is unless we go into the color tab on export like I show at 45:30 and select our Output Display Transform there.
You can work this way; it's totally valid. However, if you weren't using the old Aces 1.0.3 version in the AE project settings, we wouldn't be able to select "sRGB Display/ACES 1.0 SDR Video" as an option on export, we'd have to pick something else, maybe sRGB Texture, which would be incorrect. And because we can't preview this conversion as it's happening as the file is saved, we would be very disappointed once we open our outputted file.
I hope that makes sense. Or if I'm misunderstanding your question please let me know!
Hi, great videos! Now that AE is out of beta do you have plans on updating your "CG into Live Action After Effects Workflow"?
Thanks so much! Even though After Effects has OCIO in the production version, I still don't think it's fully production ready. We're still missing some key features (ability to bake in display transforms at the layer level, support for ACES1.3 gamut compression, etc.). If I'm using After Effects for comp work, I'm still using the Fnord plugin instead.
Thanks for detailed video It would help to use same OCIO config file that C4D/redshift uses. Not perfect, but easy to wrap your head around I guess. What do you think?
Yeah, you can select a custom OCIO config file in the Project settings options and you can point to the same one Redshift ships with. But that really doesn't gain us anything. The transforms are the same.
Thanks for this, really cleared things up for me regarding C4D and RS. However I was wondering about how using the photographic exposure in the renderview will effect this workflow, do we need to bake in the transform to use it? Should we avoid using it if we want the Raw ACES output? Thanks!
The photographic exposure Redshift Post Effect will clamp your high dynamic range values. So even if you export a 32bit EXR, the data would be the same as a jpg; no high dynamic range RAW EXR anymore. But! The new RS Camera in the latest Cinema 4D does have exposure options similar to the Post effect that will Not clamp your raw values. So you're safe to use that and keep your raw EXR workflow intact.
@@igobyzak Thanks so much for the quick reply! Looks like I’ll be updating RS! :)
@@MitchSimard Just to make sure, the new camera is in the new version of Cinema 4D. There's no longer a RS Camera tag on the camera and a lot more options are built in, including the exposure controls.
wow that is an awesome looking foam/fiber! is it made with hairs?
Ha! Thanks! It's made of splines using Rocket Lasso's Ricochet plugin.
@@igobyzak looks so good, thanks for sharing how
Hey Zak, great video! You have a very nice looking Foam Material in your C4D Redshift Testscene, the blue bended foam between the two white cubes. I guess it's either the "Strand Foam", "Big Foam" of "Foam". Could you point me in a direction how the material was made? Or where i can get/buy it? It's visible i.e. at 10min in the video.
Thanks so much! That greenish blue foam was made using @RocketLasso 's Ricochet plugin. Basically it's a cube filled with a spline that's been bounced around its interior filling it up. It's then got a Redshift Object tag on it with Curve option set to cylinders. So I'm rendering the spline as thin lines at rendertime. The material is just a basic subsurface material. Hope that helps!
@@igobyzak Ah that totally makes sense, thanks! Now i have a reason to get the Ricochet PlugIn.
Just tried bouncing x particles in the cube with xp trail and then current state to object, was also quick until i'll get the rocket lasso plugin. Thanks again, love the result :)
So as of Jan 2023 the production version of AE now has ACES built in BUT the project color settings seem to have changed significantly since your great tutorial in BETA. I cannot now get a match between my C4D 2023 renders in Picture Viewer and in AE, no matter what settings I try! I was successfully working with the old clunky workflow - surely I can't be the only one who's struggling!
As of writing this, I'm using the current version of After Effects (23.1.0 Build 83) and OCIO has not been implemented. OCIO is only still in Beta. You may be seeing ACES color spaces listed in the color options for After Effects, but these have been there for a while and is not the same as OCIO implementation. Right now I still think the fnord OCIO plugin is the best option for ACES in After Effects. I have a tutorial on that workflow here: czcams.com/video/HGC8k2gbS1s/video.html
You're getting pretty significant gamma shifts in your exports at both 46:30 and 49:35. I get the same shift in all my tests. Can you tell if there's something in the workflow to correct this or just an artifact of it being in Beta?
I just looked into this. It seems like with AE Beta, on export of the JPG an incorrect Rec709 profile is being embedded which slightly changes the gamma of the image.
Bringing the outputs from AE Beta into photoshop and selecting "Assign Color Space" we can see the current color space is incorrectly set to "Rec.709 Gamma 2.4." If we assign sRGB the gamma shift disappears and now matches our original.
I would think this is a bug in the current AE Beta version ( I can't think of a reason why a Rec.709 color space would be applied here). But I believe this can be fixed by going into the color tab in the Output Module Settings in the AE Render Queue and Unchecking "Embed color space." Seemed to work for me, but I don't believe this should be happening in the first place so I wouldn't use this as a trusted workflow, just a temporary fix. But really, I am not using the Beta for anything. I'm still sticking with the production version of AE and using the FNORD plugin which is working wonderfully. Just have to apply that gamma fix to correct for double sRGB curves being applied.
I've noticed that dealing with imported textures, for instance some artwork for a product rendering, Aces color profile fuck up your image turning it dark and dull. That's pretty bad in my opinion. Color conversions should be more accurate.
Yeah it's a common issue with brand accurate colors being changed by the tone mapping that's happening when going from high dynamic range ACEScg to low dynamic range sRGB. It isn't really an oversight or a lack of accuracy, it's just a situation where you can't have it all. It's either you tonemap and colors and intensity of the original "brand" colors change or you don't tonemap. Can't have both unfortunately.
@@igobyzakI've realized that applying an inverted color profile works in those situations, but it's a good idea to reduce the highlights to prevent them from blowing out in your renders. I think a lot of people still don't know how to deal with this new color management and we find a lot of distorted information.
Hi Zak - can I start a countdown on a new video now that ACES 1.3 is in the production release? I cannot manually manage the color in ACES 1.3 with OCIO Color Space Transform Effect alone and the display color space set to none.
Honestly not too much has changed from the Beta version unfortunately. One thing you can now do however is apply your sRGB SDR ACES 1.0 Video Output Display Transform on export if you're using the ACES 1.3 OCIO option. In the output module of the render queue, under the color tab, if you click Show All, the Display transforms will be listed. It's something but I don't like working this way so I'm still using the Fnord plugin.
I'm guessing that the Substance integration hasn't been updated for OCIO. Actually when a Substance is converted to Redshift, all of the Texture nodes' Color Space options are deactivated so I'm not sure how Redshift is handling color profiles for the various inputs. When I convert the C4D color management to OCIO in the project settings, the Substance materials all become Linearerized and dark. If you do the OCIO converstion in C4D first in the beginning of setting up the project then add the Substances they import unaffected by a transform.
I need to try this Substance thing. I've never used it, so unfortunately I'm not sure what the workflow is like between programs. I'm not too happy with the way Cinema is doing it's conversion to OCIO. I think it's confusing and you can click that convert button over and over again to continually transform your colors. I'm not sure what the use case for that would be so I'm hoping Maxon revisits how they're handling color conversions.
@@igobyzak I imagine everything will get sorted in time and become more intuitive, for both Maxon and Adobe. Unfortunately, we have to suffer through the ACES transition for both. Seems like we are right in the middle of the slow process.
Thing is: When dong all the ACES workflow in the end my exported video look exactly like in Ae when looking at in VLC Player. Nice.
BUT: as soon as i send it to my iPhone it differs significantly. And when looking at the same file on my iPad it's a new 3rd look i get.
(btw whe i use sidecar to use iPad as second monitor the video also differs again. It near the Ae look, but not exactly same.).
Can someone confirm?
Zak,
thank you so much for your videos! I'm learning a lot from you as a student in that field.
I sadly made one mistake which is that I accidentally left the EXR render in 16bit floats. This confronts me with the sRGB Color Profile. As shown at 6:28.
Now in Davinci, of course, the ACES transform node in the color page leaves me with wrong colors.
I'm puzzled on how to continue. I'd be happy to just get the colors back from the original render. I can't really go back as the whole project took over 100 hours on 4 PC's...
Does someone know a fix?
Got it!
Just use a Color Space Transform with a linear input gamma.
Cheers!
Thanks! If you've rendered EXRs with the Aces transform baked in, really what you're dealing with at that point is pretty much the same as importing sRGB jpegs. There would be no need to use an Aces workflow in Resolve because the conversion from Aces to sRGB is already done.
Hey Zak, now that the stable version has OCIO support added, has anything changed from your tutorial here? I've noticed that AFX is using OCIO 1.2.
I don't think much has changed. I know they added the "sRGB - Display/ACES 1.0 SDR Video" Display Output Transform and others (P3, Rec2100) to the Output Color Space list under the Color tab of the Output Module Settings (if you've selected the "ACES 1.3 CG and ACES 1.3 Studio for your OCIO Configuration). So we can bake our ACES transforms in on export. BUT! There is currently a bug for stills export that embeds a Rec709 Gamma 2.4 color profile to images exported as sRGB; so your files will have incorrect gamma applied. AE knows about the bug and said they are working on a fix in an update.
But honestly if I'm using After Effects for post work, I'm still using the Fnord plugin. Currently not a fan of the way AE has their OCIO setup, and they're still missing standard functionality of ACES 1.3.
@@igobyzak Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my question. Good to know. I find the way they implemented it a bit confusing to be honest. I mean color management was and still is a complicated subject but ACES wanted make it a lot easier. But with Adobe having 3 options to choose from in the first place it makes it so much more complicated. Do you think it would make sense to point AFX to the ACES config of C4d/Redshift? But I guess there is still the problem with not having the display transforms available
You definitely could use your own OCIO config file, but you're right, we don't have access to the Display Transforms through the OCIO Layer Effect so we can't "bake in" our final ACES transforms in the composition/timeline. We can only do it on final export. So really it seems like this setup is only really intended for those doing vfx comp work that would export and send to an editor or colorist for final delivery. In that workflow you'd only really need to use the Display Transform as a temporary view transform in the composition window; no reason to have the option to "bake in" the ACES look in the timeline as we'd want to keep our export as linear gamma ACES EXR files. But I find this strange because Adobe doesn't have a solution for final delivery, so they're basically saying "you'll need to buy a competitor's product to finish your project."
As far as the 3 choices, I think this really comes down to the options between ACES 1.2 (where we do have the old "Output-sRGB" option in our OCIO layer effects") or the ACES 1.3 ACEScg (limited list of transforms) or ACES 1.3 Studio (tons of transforms listed to accommodate lots of different camera models like Sony, Arri, RED, etc.). But one of the biggest changes in ACES 1.3 was the Gamut Compression, which in After Effects there's currently no way to use. So yeah, not ready for prime time.
can you do this in photoshop for stills? or is AE used for stills as well?
There is a Photoshop workflow but I hate it. It's complicated and strange. I'd prefer to do basic color correction and ACES conversion in After Effects then export as a 16bit TIFF for any final work in Photoshop.
Hello! What Color Space we need to use in Dome Light in C4D R26 and RS 3.5+? Auto mode gives more saturated and tasty result than Rec.709. I watched your tutorial for RS 3.0 version and you said that they are the same. Thank you!
In general, when we select what color space to use, we're telling Redshift how to interpret the image file we're using. If we're using an HDR image for our dome light (.hdr or .exr) we would normally select "scene-linear-Rec.709-sRGB" as our input space, because a true high dynamic range image has a linear gamma curve (or "transfer function").
I would say "scene-linear-Rec.709-sRGB" is used for dome lights 99% of the time. Some high dynamic range images are not in sRGB color space though; some have already been converted to ACEScg for instance and if the person making the file is considerate, would include the color space in the file name. If that was the case we would select "ACEScg" as our input color space. However, there's nothing stopping us from using a regular old jpg in our dome light (a jpg is only 8 bits and can not contain true high dynamic range data. It's also not linear gamma; it has an sRGB gamma curve baked in). If that were the case, although unlikely, we would select sRGB as our input space. The "Auto" feature is Redshift guessing at which color space to use, but I don't always trust it. Sorry there's not a single answer here, but I hope this makes sense!
@@igobyzak thanks for your answer! I have different result on “Auto” and “rec.709” even if I I pick HDR from c4d library. The second one is desaturated. As far as I know, maps from library are not in acesCG. But when I choose “AcesCG” it’s the same result as “Auto”. It blows my mind. I tested it in 2023 version and had the same result.
@@alexandermarichevsky3176 when selecting "Auto" here for HDR images, Redshift is guessing that the image is "scene-linear-Rec709-sRGB", not plain old "Rec.709" which explains why you're seeing different results when switching. There probably is a difference between selecting scene-linear-rec709-srgb and ACEScg, but the difference may be very subtle depending on what your HDR dome light texture is.
@@igobyzak thank you!
Instead of ZIP compression method I was previously told to use PXR24-lossy 24-bit float compression. What's the difference?
Yeah I think different compression settings are better for certain circumstances and programs. Like I think Nuke handled EXRs compressed one way better than others. Unfortunately I really don't know anything about this. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful!
A quick rule of thumb is compression is sorted top to bottom from least to most... So DWAB is most compressed and smallest file size. Ae also enjoys this most i find
One thing I am concern. What if I have composition with plenty of text layers, vectors based on RGB, HEX, client brand manual values and aces change them all? If I create adjustment layer with input: color picking output sRGB and output ACEScg, it nicely changes everything but ACES images it changes to sRGB like it's 8 bit or sRGB.
Any sRGB layers would go above the Aces transform, so they're not converted.
Color Management doesnt show up in my settings :(
you don't use the new node graph for materials?
I still prefer the old nodes
I'm no expert.. But use I the custom the 1.2 ocio I dont need any OCIO converter FX...
coming back with another question- when you set to save as jpg it applies the view transforms automatically. But if I try to export as jpg an image already rendered in the picture viewer, it doesn't apply the view transform. Any idea how to fix this? Thank you!
There was a bug in Cinema that prevented the view transform from being applied to jpg images saved from the picture viewer, but I thought it had been fixed. What version of Cinema are you using?
@@igobyzak I'm using the latest version of c4d + rs.
How do you get so many color output options on export? I only see like 10 you have 50+
If you select the "Studio" version ACES you'll get all of the camera transforms listed. If you don't need all those you can select the CG version with less options. But if you're looking for export settings, checking the "Show All" check box will now give you the Display Transforms for exporting as "sRGB Display ACES 1.0 SDR Video." Hope that helps!
Would be nice if the color match was implimented in non-C4D apps. Like Houdini;
I do not know why I did not realized until you got to AE this was old. You gonna do an updated version. I like the way the AE system works now.
As far as I know, there have only been minor improvements to ACES in After Effects since this post. Still no support for ODT in the timeline. Looks are still not supported so no access to ACES 1.3 Gamma Compression. The color grading tools have not been updated, still expecting display referred footage(Rec709). DaVinci Resolve is free, so until Adobe takes requests from the community seriously, I'll be happily working in Resolve/Fusion.
Does rendering with post fx clamp the colors?
It depends. Bloom, streak, and flare do not clamp values. Color Control Curves and LUTs will clamp EXR values.
Good to know! Thanks for all that you do surrounding this confusing topic 🙏@@igobyzak
Thank you! Great explanation. Looks like adobe fighting for the right to be most stupid and complicated workflow ever plus buggy and heavy software :(
Thanks so much! Yeah, right now it's a mess. But I know people are speaking up about its flaws in the Adobe Beta forums so hopefully they'll listen to the feedback and implement some much needed changes.
octane pleasae
Why not use AP0(st 2065-1) for EXR files? Acescentral says EXR should use AP0.🤔
Use AP0 for EXR files at what stage? We don't use AP0 from the renderer because the extra huge color gamut can cause rendering artifacts when colors go negative. That's one of the main reasons AP1's smaller color gamut was conceived.
But if you mean exporting our final composites or color graded EXRs out of our compositing program, that's certainly a valid option, and some studio pipelines like to transfer files only as AP0 2065 for clarity. But converting a AP1 render to AP0 doesn't change the look or give any benefit, just adds an extra step. So if it's not being done to meet file handoff specifications, I can't think of a good reason to go through the trouble of converting to AP0.
@@igobyzak I mean export C4D files to AE, or Davinci Resolve in pipeline. Do people actually use ACEScg EXR between with C4D、MAYA、AE.. etc ，just before LMT(color grading) in real life for efficiency？ only use AP0 EXR for LMT?such as Nuke end up with Compositing ,export AP0 EXR to Davinci Resolve,and Davinci export AP0 EXR to Clients?
But the converting imported 8 bit images is super confusing.
Yeah, agreed. Lots of gotchas in there. Wanted to make sure I mentioned where one could possibly run into issues.
The workflow would've been correct if you just kept the sRGB view transform and keep working in ACEScg. That way you work in linear space with a higher gamut/dynamic range, which is more correct/accurate and just apply the conversion to the desired gamut/profile when exporting. You're overcomplicating things and ignoring all the advantages of ACES...
I go over exactly what you're describing at the 45 minute mark (Chapter Marker: 44:46 - ACES Transforms Only on Export). I then go on to explain the shortcomings using this workflow.
I also want to point out that when I'm using the OCIO layer based effect, the view transforms are placed on top of the layer stack so I am still taking full advantage of a high dynamic range, scene referred, linear gamma workflow with the advantages of ACES intact. Thanks for watching!
why is: New Solid: H:0/S:0/B:100 light gray? It's even called "light grey" 😞
Because it's being tonemapped by the ACES Transform. Actual white in this scenario is reserved for glowing objects or very bright specular highlights, values above 1. It would be like a sheet of paper compared to an LED panel...the paper next to the LED panel would be closer to a light gray compared to the white of the LED light.
@@igobyzak thanks! I did it now while set the Display Color Space set to None
Hello! In this video (czcams.com/video/HGC8k2gbS1s/video.html) there was a way to render Baked-In EXR. I can`t match viewport picture and exported to AE with new pipeline. Can we still render Baked-In EXR?
How can a custom monitor profile be added to the OCIO config so that all the available colors of a wide gamut display are used?
First of all this ACES system is ridiculous.... A color management system that doesn't support monitor profiles out of the box is not a color management system at all. The ACES configs don't even include AdobeRGB... only sRGB display and a bunch of pro color spaces most people can't use. Tried a few hacks using the 3D LUT maker from Display Cal. The only color accurate result was obtained by hacking the default Maya OCIO Profile. I added another .spi3d LUT to the Adobe RGB Display sections that converts from AdobeRGB to my monitor color profile. This displays the colors with exact accuracy but AdobeRGB is not much different from sRGB, limiting the gamut displayed below my monitors capabilities. So I tried with the ACES 1.2 config and converting from BT2020 to my monitor color profile. Resulting in highly skewed colors, hues are shifted, gamma or something is off... etc... not even close
Again, does someone know how to properly add a custom monitor profile to the system? Thanks :-)
I don't think I'm understanding what you're working on. You want to "bake in" your monitor's ICC profile to your rendered image? I'm not sure I understand the use case for that. There may be some valid workflow you're trying to implement, but I'm not understanding it. In general, if you're just rendering out images that are going to be printed (I'm assuming print as the end result because you mentioned AdobeRGB color space) you would want to make sure that your rendered image takes full advantage of the wider color gamut AdobeRGB offers above sRGB. So we would render our images using ACEScg color primaries (much wider gamut that sRGB and AdobeRGB) and linear gamma. So now we have a "RAW" wide gamut linear gamma file like an EXR or TIFF or whatever format you've saved your floating point RAW file in. From this point we need to decide where our image is going to be viewed. If it's on a regular computer display over the internet (instagram, youtube, etc.) we would need to apply our Output Display Transform to go from our RAW ACEScg linear file to our sRGB color space and sRGB gamma curve final delivery file.
The OCIO config file that comes with Redshift does include an AdobeRGB profile. If you select that in your fnord OCIO plugin under Custom Config, you can access that. So you could apply an OCIO layer on top of your RAW EXR render layer set to "Display" - Input Space: ACEScg, Display: Rec2020, View: ACES 1.0 SDR-video. Then you could add another OCIO plugin layer on top of that set to "Convert" - Input Space: Rec2020, Output Space: AdobeRGB. When saving this still frame out of After Effects you'd need to go to the Color Management tab of the Output Module in your Render Queue and check the "Preserve RGB" check box. Export it as a 16bit Tiff. Then open up this 16bit Tiff in Photoshop and go to "Edit" - "Assign Profile" - "AdobeRGB." After Effects will incorrectly assign an sRGB tag to your export as it doesn't know you've used a 3rd party plugin to change color spaces. If you're not sure what I'm talking about here, look at my previous ACES tutorials where I go over the ACES workflow in After Effects NON BETA. Which is still the way I'm working. This BETA version implementation of ACES is not ready for prime time.
But really, the monitor you're using should be calibrated to the color space it's intending to display. So if your monitor is a P3 color space monitor and can display 100% of the P3 color gamut, the custom ICC profile you create for your monitor just makes sure that the exact panel your monitor uses is displaying those P3 colors as accurately as possible. I'm not sure why you'd want to permanently apply any adjustments made to your exact monitor to your final image. I'd imagine what one would want is to make sure your image is in P3 color space and that your monitor is properly calibrated to P3 color space so you can accurately display your image and make informed decisions about how to color correct and edit your render.
But maybe I'm not understanding what your workflow is and what you're trying to achieve?
@@igobyzak Thanks a lot for replying! However I figured out how it can be done just a day ago. It was really dificult because there is no documentaion on this. I used the Rec2020 profile as base and made a LUT that converts from it to my monitor profile. Added it to a duplicated Rec2020 display in the OCIO config and now it works. I can use my full monitor gamut after setting everything up. I switch to whatever profile is best suited to the output just before the final render. I need to do this because my monitor can't emulate any video color space other than sRGB. It also has a gamut wider than P3 and AdobeRGB. And using it in any mode other than native breaks color management in other applications.
Hi, I am sorry, but the AE part is very painful to watch. You are mixing up many many things. I saw that you already had some chats, but I am afraid to people that are new to OCIO this might confuse them more than help them. ACESCentral might be a good place to get some clarifications. Best regards, D
I'm sorry you were in pain! Happy to discuss any specifics I am "mixing up." Right now, unfortunately, AE's implementation of OCIO is severely lacking. My hope is to revisit this once a more robust version is added. I did add some notes to the description of the video that should clear up some things, but if there are others I'm all ears! Please reply to this and let me know!l
@@igobyzak Hi, first of all thanks for doing your videos. I am looking forward to what AE/OCIO will bring, because until now it's a pain to mix it in workflows with 3D, Nuke, Flame, Resolve etc. I liked your start with Cinema (that I don't know and use) and how they implemented OCIO. What I miss in your video is to try to stick to the concept IDT-Working ColorSpace-RRT&ODT. You showed it nicely in Cinema, then bypassing the ODT and head into AE. AE's viewer is now the RRT&ODT until you burn it into the image data when saving a JPG/ProRes etc.
That should be the concept. The moment you baked/burned the ODT into the render from Cinema in AE and switched the viewer off - you are bypassing the concept. I continued a bit in your video and this was the painful part to watch. Until now I did not make it further. But your video is still quite long so maybe you will explain all of it. And I will continue watching it. You are making big efforts in creating this content. I hope you could explain not only which settings to change, but what the user should expect now in a robust implementation of OCIO. If the beta does not work yet properly (to understand it I would need to check myself of course as well and I did not do it) then it might be to early to try to make it work somehow? I hope you understand my critic and don't take it in a bad way. You asked for feedback in the beginning. I must admit I am using ACES/OCIO on a daily basis and still understand only a part of it. Because the topic is complicated. Thanks for the good links in the description and I am looking forward to a AE release with a proper OCIO support soon. And then maybe a follow up video will come out soon from you! Best, Daniel
@@danielbrylka2228 Yeah, of course! Thank you so much for the response! I appreciate you taking the time to write this all out. And you're right. If you're coming from a Compositor point of view where you're using ACES as part of a VFX pipeline, this would not be the way to do things. The challenge for me is trying to come up with a solution for my personal workflow, which as of now, consists of me being the only person in my pipeline. So I'm responsible from everything from image creation to final delivery to clients. I know there are quite of few people that are in a similar situation as I am, and really this tutorial is for 3D artists like me.
I just had a nice chat with Shebbe from ACESCentral about some of these points, because like you, he mentioned how I'm really missing the point here with a true OCIO ACES workflow and suggested using the Composition View Transform to view my "final" result without actually converting the raw EXR to sRGB in my timeline.
I'm going to defend my bastardized workflow by explaining the problem I'm solving. Right now we render out raw EXRs that contain scene data. I believe ACES can handle like 30 stops of dynamic range (not sure exactly, but something like that). So all the values in my scene, once output to sRGB will have those values tone mapped between 0 and 1. But if my goal from the beginning is to replicate a photo I would take with my DSLR, I wouldn't have 30 stops of dynamic range to play with. It would probably be closer to like 14 or 16 maybe with newer sensors. I can bracket my shots with my DSLR to match this 3D scenario, but that's not what would happen for a typical photo. I'll also add here that a common complaint from 3D people just getting into ACES is "why are my whites gray now?" Right now, there's no option to change the RRT and ODT to tell it I don't want a full 30 stop dynamic range image, I only want like half that, so clip these specular highlights. So to get around this, I do a final levels or curves adjustment AFTER my ODT to decide for myself what values clip to white.
I understand that if I was a compositor only and had to send this scene off to another artist for color correction this is absolutely ruining things. I would need to export either ACEScg EXRs clearly labeled as ACEScg or as a clearly labeled ACES2065 EXR so the next person could do their work.
But if I'm the one delivering final content for social media to a client, wouldn't you agree this would be a valid way of working? If not, I'm happy to learn about another approach.
Another challenge was the notion that now that OCIO is in After Effects all our problems are solved. My experience while trying it out, I really felt like the opposite was true. AE still has a LONG way to go so I thought I would share my experiences and thoughts to date.
I know I could have explained this better; this is not my best tutorial, not by a long shot, so apologies for the scattered nature of the way the material was presented. I definitely appreciate the feedback.
@@igobyzak Ok, so if You use davinci... Is it not better just to work with visual transform in ae, render out aces plates and work in davinci? Instead of bake jpgs in AE with the ocio transform layers?
@@dawidd1933 If I'm working in Davinci, I just do all the work within Davinci, no need for AE. Davinci handles ACES transforms beautifully (including an elegant solution for parametric gamut compression). I can comp AOVs in Fusion using ACEScg and do my display transforms in the Color page. The key here is that I can also put a node AFTER my ODT to sRGB to do any final color correcting / levels adjustments before exporting. I think there's this myth that the ODT is some magical precise conversion that shouldn't be messed with. If I want to clip a ton of whites for my final export, that's up to me; I decide how my final image looks.
After effects is getting more and more obsolete. With great compositing tools in blender, davinci resolve realtime fusion rendering it's really getting interesting.
I've been using Davinci more and more and really liking it. It'll be interesting to see where After Effects is headed.
Sorry but it is all too fucking complex! I get the colorspace is wider and shit but MAKE IT easier ffs!
Yeah I'm with you. I think the OCIO being in Beta and not fully functioning in After Effects is adding to the confusion. If you haven't yet, check out the other videos I have linked in the description and stick with it. I promise it'll begin to make more sense. And once programs (looking at you Adobe) fully adopt a robust OCIO implementation, this is all going to be much easier.
Thanks for the efforts! I sent you a DM on ACESCentral. Would love to discuss some points :)
Great chat today, Shebbe! Thanks for sharing all your knowledge. Making some updates in the description and pinned comments.