ACES

Animation Department

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	1.0	Yes	included
Nuke	1.0	Yes	included
Fusion	no	Yes	included
AFX	no	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

File Formate

sRGB: jpg, pnd, tga, tif8, gif
Log: DPX
Linear: EXR

After FX Setup

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

1. Here you can load the OCIO file
2. Next you can choose the source color space from your material or comp. Alexa log or ACEScg for example.
3. 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.