ACES

ACHTUNG WIP Seite, also echt WIP!

In this document you will find all necessary information regarding the ACES color management workflows.
Please read all information at least twice and follow the instructions carefully.
If there are any questions concerning the documentation please contact Paul Dreisen for further information.

Introduction

The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is a color image encoding system created by hundreds of industry professionals under the auspices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ACES allows for a fully encompassing color accurate workflow, with "seamless interchange of high quality motion picture images regardless of source"
To make things short, it handles colors pretty well.
From the technical side ACES is a huge color space which can handle very other color space without loosing any information.
Do you want to know more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Color_Encoding_System
http://opencolorio.org/

ACES vs OCIO what?

Wtf is ACES and why do I find so many information about OCIO?
ACES is the color space.
OCIO is a set of tools designed to manage everything ACES is able to do with colors.
If possible we are going to use one OCIO config for all our DCC tools.
At the moment not every tool supports the use of a custom OCIO config!

Important info on using ACES

Projects done in ACES can be easily saved into sRGB or Rec 709 color space.
You will need to convert all used input files with the right mode into ACES, otherwise they will produce wrong colors.
In case we do only a part time ACES workflow it is possible to write out into log files with the same look as the camera raw material (Nuke setup)
Working with ACES means paying extra attention to color and color workflow rules!
If a 3D rendered file is done using ACES it cannot be used with a sRGB comp workflow!
In a perfect world we would preconvert all plates into ACES before we start working on the in VFX.
You can find our OCIO configs here: X:\Pipeline\_Globals\LUTs

Supported DCC tools and how they support ACES

Before we go into details here is a list of all our inhouse DCC´s we use to create our images and films.

Software	ACES	OCIO	Plugin
Maya	1.03	Yes	included
Nuke	1.03	Yes	included
Fusion	no	Yes	included
AFX	Yes	Plugin	Yes
Flame	1.0	no	included
Resolve	1.0	no	included
Houdini	tba	tba	tba
Cinema	tba	tba	tba
Photoshop	no	ICC profile	no
Premiere	tba	tba	tba

As you can see most of our tools support the new ACES workflow.
As there are severy things you need to take care of the setup process for each DCC will be explained a little lower on this page.

Workflow best case

everything is running as planned ^^ (Never gonna happend but here is how it should be)
To make our life easier we will only use ACES in parts of the Pipeline where it will help us the most.

Editing, Flame and Davinci will stay in our typical REC709 world and we do not need to use OCIO or ACES.
Backplates which are needed for adding effects or paintjobs going thru Nuke need to be exported as unclamped REC709 encoded EXR files (float 16/32bit)
In Nuke we will then transform them into linear ACES files to comp them with our 3D files.
Comp renderings need to be converted back into the same colorspace as they have been delivered. (90% of the time this will be REC709).
At the end of the project we render out a sRGB/Rec709 converted Master for sendout and the client.

File Formate and conversions

ACES supports every file format we know, but to make our life a little bit easier we should limit our selves to use only a few formats.
Not every format can or should handle every ACES colorspace.

There are the usual 8 bit formats which are there to store sRGB image data

for example: jpg, png, tga, tif8, gif
all these files need to be converted into linear files using the utility sRGB - texture conversion

Log: DPX
Linear: EXR

Maya setup

Setup your Maya like this.

To avoid errors in RedShift you should setup your render settings like this.

Error creating thumbnail: File missing

Nuke Setup

Nuke is best suited for a OCIO color management workflow. To setup Nuke in the right way you will need to do the following steps.
Error creating thumbnail: File missing

Press the hotkey "s" to load up your project settings
select the "color" tab and switch from nuke to OCIO in the color management field.
select "custom" again and enter this config location into the folder: x:/Pipeline/_Globals/LUTs/OCIO/aces_1.0.3/config.
now everything is ready for working with ACES in Nuke

Flame Setup

Resolve Setup

Digital Fusion Setup

After FX Setup

Since AFX version 2018 the Adobe guys did a first implementation to support ACES.
You can switch it on when you click on the color mode change option in the "Projects" (See image for detailed info)
In After Effects you can load the plugin "OpenColorIO" and put it onto an adjustment layer ontop of your comp or footage.
Inside of the plugin window you will need to load our OCIO config file from here: X:\Pipeline\_Globals\LUTs\OCIO\aces_1.0.3
Error creating thumbnail: File missing

Here you can load the OCIO file
Next you can choose the source color space from your material or comp. Alexa log or ACEScg for example.
At last you can choose the output color space which is normally sRGB(ACES)

The setup in AFX is a bit tricky and complex, but at least you can work with ACEScg linear images if you get them from our 3D guys.

Premiere Setup

Same as in AFX but at the moment the plugin is too slow to use it for editing :-(

Substance Painter Setup

Substance Painter is not able to save/bake textures into the selected LUT Format, it is just possible to display it in the viewport of Painter.

The maps exported from SD and SP are in sRGB or gamma-encoded space. They are not exported as linear.

EXR Textures are also saved as sRGB not as Linear. <<< Pretty shitty!!

How to activate?

1. You need to import/copy the LUT Profile to Substance Painter.
2. LUTS are located here. X:\Pipeline\_Globals\LUTs\OCIO\forSubstance
3. Drag/Drop the LUTS to your Color Profiles shelf in Substance Painter.

4. Activate and select your desired Color Profile