It’s a big day for Beta. In today’s Beta build (23.1.0 build 44), you are getting not just one, but two new features to take out for a test drive. Introducing native OCIO/ACES support in After Effects! I’ve attached documentation for a deep dive into the feature, including a Quick Start guide which is copied below. We would love to hear your feedback, including what you think of the workflow, and whether you get the results you expect. As always, thank you so much for participating! Quick start File > Project Settings a. Create an After Effects project and select Color Engine as OCIO color managed. b. Select the appropriate OCIO configuration file. i. We are shipping the ACES configuration ACES 1.0.3 with the application bundle. ii. NOTE on ACES 1.3 Configurations In addition to the default ACES 1.0.3 configuration, there are now two beta configurations from OCIO which are compliant with ACES 1.3 (ACES CG v0.2.0 (Beta) and ACES Studio v0.1.0 (Beta)). These are still under development, but they do include new features and enhancements setting the stage for ACES 2.0, such as the ability to set the Rules in the config file to an assigned color space. We will update these to the release 1.3 versions once they are available. c. Select a Working Color Space d. Select a Display Color Space2. Add some media (EXR, etc.) to your project a. Media Color Space is automatically assigned a default color space (specified by the default role) b. Media Color Space can be overridden via the Interpret Footage dialog accessed by right-clicking the footage in your Project panel 3. Create a composition a. Composition window shows color converted content i. Color conversion - Media Color Space to Working Color Space ii. Color conversion - Working Color Space to Display Color Space b. Use the Display Color Space dropdown in the composition toolbar to change which display transform you are viewing 4. Export the composition a. Add the composition to render queue b. Select the Output Color Space in Output Module Settings > Color dialog 5. Use OCIO Color Space Transform effect to apply any color space transform to your layer, especially if you need to apply an effect or CDL/LUT that was created in a different color space. 6. Use OCIO File Transform effect to apply a LUT or CDL to your layer. Make sure to change the color space using the OCIO Color Space Transform if required for that LUT/CDL, and then apply another transform to bring it back to the working space you are using.

Known Participant

Question

Welcome to native OCIO/ACES support in After Effects!

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 18, 2022
25 replies
29348 views

It’s a big day for Beta. In today’s Beta build (23.1.0 build 44), you are getting not just one, but two new features to take out for a test drive. Introducing native OCIO/ACES support in After Effects!

I’ve attached documentation for a deep dive into the feature, including a Quick Start guide which is copied below.

We would love to hear your feedback, including what you think of the workflow, and whether you get the results you expect.

As always, thank you so much for participating!

Quick start

File > Project Settings
a. Create an After Effects project and select Color Engine as OCIO color managed.
b. Select the appropriate OCIO configuration file.
i. We are shipping the ACES configuration ACES 1.0.3 with the application bundle.
ii. NOTE on ACES 1.3 Configurations
In addition to the default ACES 1.0.3 configuration, there are now two beta configurations from OCIO which are compliant with ACES 1.3 (ACES CG v0.2.0 (Beta) and ACES Studio v0.1.0 (Beta)). These are still under development, but they do include new features and enhancements setting the stage for ACES 2.0, such as the ability to set the Rules in the config file to an assigned color space. We will update these to the release 1.3 versions once they are available.
c. Select a Working Color Space
d. Select a Display Color Space2. Add some media (EXR, etc.) to your project
a. Media Color Space is automatically assigned a default color space (specified by the default role)
b. Media Color Space can be overridden via the Interpret Footage dialog accessed by right-clicking the footage in your Project panel

3. Create a composition
a. Composition window shows color converted content
i. Color conversion - Media Color Space to Working Color Space
ii. Color conversion - Working Color Space to Display Color Space
b. Use the Display Color Space dropdown in the composition toolbar to change which display transform you are viewing

4. Export the composition
a. Add the composition to render queue

b. Select the Output Color Space in Output Module Settings > Color dialog

5. Use OCIO Color Space Transform effect to apply any color space transform to your layer, especially if you need to apply an effect or CDL/LUT that was created in a different color space.

6. Use OCIO File Transform effect to apply a LUT or CDL to your layer. Make sure to change the color space using the OCIO Color Space Transform if required for that LUT/CDL, and then apply another transform to bring it back to the working space you are using.

Work_natively_in_ACES_in_After_Effects.pdf

Feature request

tomg45872964

Participant

Hi, I'm viewing the AE comp on my external screen through Mercury transmit.

But there's no option to do a transform to Rec709 on that, I would like to request that feature. Thanks

C

chrisbrearley

Inspiring

This needs to happen. Can't see any reason why the external display output transform can't follow what the compostion window is doing.

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

Output templates don't remember output color space. They seem like they do - after editing the template the color space is getting applied but that is only in the current AE session. After AE restert all templates revert to the default working color space 😞

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

Here is something a little different.

Grain.

First of all, Adobe seriously, f**** you. 5 years and Add Grain still doesn't work in 32bit??? The ACES implementation is actually quite good in the latest release, but we still can't use Grain in our shots?!?!?!?!

Secondly.

Today I did a couple of my first commercial shots with the new OCIO CM system - it went generally without a hitch, very comfy, congrats on that - buuuuut I had a hard time matching the grain from the orginal footage. The grain almost didn't get applied to a highlight (around 0.7 luminance on color picker) - the original footage had visible grain there. No matter what I did, how I changed application curves it just wouldn't cover the highlight.

Now it might have been that particular piece of footage, weird grain from camera or something, but I kinda felt that at this brightness level I should be able to apply grain.

So it got me thinking, shouldn't Add Grain's application curves take into account the OCIO CM as well?

Most other color management we did till now mainly changed the color gamut but not the brightness values, so it didn't matter, but ACES comes with a big change in the brightness of the pixels. The application curves in Add Grain divide the ranges to Shadows, Mids and Highlights - pretty standard stuff - but now it matters when these are actually calculated - on original source clip's luminance values or on the sRGB displayed values. I mean, medium values in the Comp Viewer that is displaying in sRGB are not medium in the source - in the source these same pixels fall under the shadows range.

Now I don't have a suggestion here, it requires much more testing, but have you taken that into consideration - for all effects that split their effect to Shadows/Mids/Highlights ranges?

C

Chris Gunningham

Participating Frequently

Hi, I'm new to this but just to report a bug or maybe user error. I've imported exr's from baselight which are 2065-1 and override color space to 2065-1 (as AE just says Aces Chromaticities) project settings are set to Aces CG, export exrs and the colours don't match when checked back. They do match however if I change project settings to 2065-1. As far as I understand it though project working space should be Aces CG. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong. This is hte non beta 23.2.1 (build 3)

Shebbe

Community Expert

When you're exporting EXR out of AE, are you selecting ACES 2065-1 on the output module settings in the color tab? That will set up the conversion from the working space to desired output space.

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

Latest Beta version - artifacts in OCIO.

This is just a gradient from pure green to pure red, but it results in some artifacts.

https://we.tl/t-q4yQDuDNCz

Can you please take a look at this?

Shebbe

Community Expert

Hey Filip. I'm not seeing this. Maybe also share your system specs.

I was on Win10, GTX 1080. Driver 516.59. Latest beta build.

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

Hmm.

Win 10, RTX3090, driver 528.02. One thing - I'm on a dual Xeon workstation - does not support AVX instructions - maybe that's an issue?

So you're telling me you see a clean gradient going from red to green - no blue pixels?

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

When in interpret Footage ->Color.

"Show all" unchecked to keep the list shorter - can we please add Output sRGB and Output rec709 to the top of suggested profiles? None of the other profiles allow us to input an sRGB or Rec709 footage to the project. Well there is the weirdly worded "color picking output - sRGB", but it's only good for sRGB and from the way it's called I'm kinda worried it will be display dependent, so at some point it might change to "color picking output - rec709" if we change the project to display in rec709?

Come to think of it, why not just add all the Output profiles to the list as well - there are just a couple of them anyway.

Lars HAGLUND

Participating Frequently

Dear Filip, all,

Yes, we need all ACES' ODTs inverted, please - to be used as "IDTs" when needed.

Kindly, Lars

C

Chetan Nanda

Adobe Employee

Hi @Lars HAGLUND ,

When we check 'Show All' in InterpretFootage > Main > Color, All Output color spaces from OCIO configuration files are listed under Interpret footage.

Just to be clear, the ask is to list View transforms as well in the Interpret footage dropdown. Am I understanding it correctly?

Also, we will be building an OCIO Display Transform Effect. Once that is available then view transform can be selected at the import (via Interpret Footage) or can be applied as an effect later on.

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

Is there a way to force color picker window to work in Display color space (ie. sRGB)? Right now it works in working color space, but when working in ACES it stops being usefull (ie. in ACEScc the vertical Hue bar is almost completely white). Would be nice if it still worked in sRGB, and showed colors in display color space and only when closing the color picker window it would convert all color values back to ACES 😕😕

C

Chetan Nanda

Adobe Employee

Hi @Filip23315833k75u ,

We have made changes around Color picker color management. Color picker is color managed and we do color conversion from working color space to selected display color space.

On which release you are checkig this?

F

Filip23315833k75u

Inspiring

Well normal production release AE 23.2. Didn't check how it works in the Beta yet.

C

Christine24511803xxz8

Participating Frequently

Hello fellow OCIO/ACES beta enthusiasts,

I am extra happy to say that native OCIO support has gone live with the 23.2 update to After Effects today!

We are so grateful for your input and help in getting it ready for this first version. This feature has been a long time in coming, with a lot of feedback from our users. There is still much work to be done, and we will be continuing to update it as we go along. But we are very excited to have this ready for everyone to start using in their productions so we can move forward in building it based on what you all need.

Again, thank you for being active in our beta forum, and we hope you will keep watching for the updates coming soon!

R

Rdanielsdesign

Participant

Thanks Christine! Is there updated documentation for this release somewhere? Best, Ryan

C

Christine24511803xxz8

Participating Frequently

Hi @Rdanielsdesign . Yep, here is the official write-up, based off the documetation that you have had shared in this beta post as well: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/opencolorio-aces-color-management.html

i_go_by_zak

Participant

Hi All! First post here so forgive me if I'm not doing this correctly. I have a few points I wanted to touch on.

1.) I just wanted to check in on the ability to bake in our view transforms before the output stage. I realize that on the Render Queue Output Module Settings we can select "Show All" to get the display transforms like "Output -sRGB/ACES - 1.0 SDR Video" but I believe this option really needs to be implemented via a layer in the timeline as well. Either as an option in the OCIO Color Space Transform effect or in its own OCIO Display Transform effect. I know this has been addressed previously, but just wondering if this was being worked on.

2.)Another issue I'm noticing is that using the Output Module set to "Output -sRGB/ACES - 1.0 SDR Video" embeds a Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 color profile in the output image. It seems like all other display transforms embed an sRGB profile. Am I missing something here?

3.) I see that ACES 1.3 has been added to the OCIO configuration in the project color tab. Is there currently any way to utilize the "look" in that OCIO? Right now I believe the one and only look is the gamut mapping, but how would one implement that gamut mapping in the timeline?

Thanks so much in advance!
-zak

Shebbe

Community Expert

Hey Zak, thanks for adding your voice!

There are many features that are missing or could be improved, but regarding your point 1 and 3 I believe that these should be number one priority before anything else. Without it, parts of the ACES workflow aren't possible.
Please Adobe, add OCIODisplay effect with an inverse option so we can add display referred elements that need to roundtrip throught RRT+ODT, and OCIOLookTransform effect for RGC.

About 2... I quickly made some jpg and png exports and they all embed Rec.709 Gamma 2.4 regardless of view transform. When it comes to stills it would perhaps make more sense to have it default to sRGB but that is not the issue here. OCIO is it's own world and actually doesn't have any ties with ICC management. Adobe could hardcode certain ICC profiles to embed along the various colorspace options perhaps, but this manual hook-in is maybe a bit odd. ACES isn't the only color management existing in OCIO. What if you use Nuke, TCam or any other out there? Or use ACES with customized displays? Adobe can't autodetect display intent and neither do other software.

I think that we should either have separate options on the export settings that allows us to manually tag files with color space and gamma for both stills (provide the icc list) and video formats (provide video profiles) or make exports not embed any color space at all. (remove embed color space checbox if OCIO is used) The former is not super elegant, but required if we'd wish to be able to do finishing in AE directly.

P

pat pro

Known Participant

Why this took so long??? - its now fun again to work with EXRs from Maya. And now we ned as fast as possible a good 3D Workflow inside of AE! GoGoGo

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