Welcome to native OCIO/ACES support in After Effects!

[Christine Goldby]

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 

1. 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.

[Dan Sturm]

Ah, good note! I should try to pull in a newer config. Though if they're baking it in, maybe they can tweak it a bit the way Resolve has to add a bit more context.

[Shebbe]

Two months have passed since initial beta launch and the only update we've seen so far was the simple replacement of the ACES release candidate config file with the release config file. There have been plenty of suggestions made on improvements and notes of lacking features in efforts to make OCIO work as smoothy as possible. Can we expect anything on this front with more room for feedback whilst in beta? What is being considered, and what isn't (if so with which reasons)? I feel like there isn't much back and forth going on. Little response on a technical level and no views on the implementations from Adobe's side for us to better understand current states and plans. Will it drop out of the blue in a release version as is?... I hope we still have time to work this out together as that is what a beta is for. Maybe it's the holidays holding you back on activity but I would love to have this be more of an open conversation rather than the occasional "Thanks, I'll add your request to a list."

[Christine Goldby]

Hi @Shebbe . There has been a lot of work happening behind the scenes. We have also had a number of holiday and time off breaks across the team, and even for beta we won't send work until we know it won't cause problems. That menas we have to make sure testing is completed before it is posted. But we do have a number of updates that will be coming out very soon. In fact I believe one of the team members responded to you earlier today with one he would love for you to have a look at. 

I do want to note though that it is also not a guarantee that we will be addressing all feature requests before the first version of OCIO support ships. We will be doing our best working with the beta group here to make sure we are building the most functional tool for the most people to begin with, and then continuing to work on it after it is out in the wild. So thank you for continuing to send your feedback, it is all being listened to and looked at, even if it cannot all be addressed right away.

[Shebbe]

Thanks @Christine Goldby! 

I see @Chetan Nanda's reply now. Must have gone completely under my radar. I'll have a look at it tomorrow! Thanks for also explaining a bit more about the current status and confirmation that all is being read and taken into consideration. Looking forward to more updates to try out.

[Dino Muhic]

Here is one problem I have:
I'm on 23.2.0 Build 34
Settings:

Now I go to a website and use Shift+Win+S to create a screenshot of something from the web.
Say this website: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/brown-mountains-2559941/

I save this using the Windows Snipping Tool as a PNG file (attached) 

I add this to my AE Project and put it into a comp.
I interpret it as Matte Paint RGB or color picking RGB Texture like this

And the result is way too dark compared to the actual image:

If I instead set the display to RAW and Preserve RGB the texture interpretation, I get the same result as my screenshot, but then of course everything else thats actually ACES looks wrong in the Viewport.

So thats a no-go.

What to do in this case?

[justins29082732]

Glad to see it's not just me with this issue. I posted about this a couple months ago and tagged as a bug. Don't know if Adobe is following other threads or just this main one for the beta. Seems like all their responses are only in this thread. Anyway, I'll link to my original bug report.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-bugs/ocio-aces-interpretting-a-png-image-with-util...

[Chetan Nanda]

Hi @justins29082732 , @Dino Muhic ,

Thanks for reporting the issue with PNG rendering.

We are able to reproduce the issue and fix is available. We will be pushing the new Beta with the fix soon.

I will update here once the beta is available for testing.

[Lars HAGLUND]

Dear all,

I am testing Build 34.

Likely has someone else already asked for this, but please:

• Add all the ACES-based "Inverse Display Color Spaces" under "Interpret Footage";
• Add all the ACES-based "Inverse Display Color Spaces" under "Input Color Space" in the OCIO Color Space Transform FX;
• Add all the ACES-based "(Forward) Display Color Spaces" under "Output Color Space" in the OCIO Color Space Transform FX;
• Add an "OCIO ACES 1.3 Reference Gamut Compression" FX;
• Add an initially enabled "ACES 1.3 Reference Gamut Compression" under "Interpret Footage" with a manual disabling possibility;
• Allow the Viewer to communicate with Apple's ColorSync, based on the chosen ACES-based Display Color Space, in order to give a MacBook Pro (year 2021 and later) the possibility to display calibrated >10-bit HDR (both P3-D65 gamut and Rec.2100 gamut must work) and calibrated SDR.

Thanks in advance,

Lars

[Lars HAGLUND]

In addition, please:

In Project Settings, add a separate "Default Media Color Space Interpretation" where the "aces_interchange: ACES2065-1" would be set up by the company I work for - while other companies (internally) may interchange "ACEScg" (although confusing/dangerous between external companies).

For the moment, Build 34, when having ACEScg chosen as Working Color Space, all incoming ACES2065-1 EXRs are wrongly interpreted as ACEScg. It is much too easy to forget to manually change that in "Interpret Footage" if being stressed, because the only, but important, difference is the AP0 versus AP1 gamut interpretation.

Kindly, Lars

[Christine Goldby]

@Lars HAGLUND , thanks for your suggestions, we'll add your votes to the requests. A question for you, the drop-down lists you are referring to in Interpret Footage and Input or Output Color Spaces are all populated off the OCIO configuration file that you choose in the Project Settings. In your first few suggestions above, are you saying you would prefer to see all available spaces beyond what your chosen config includes?

[Shebbe]

I think what Lars means is that we need to have integrated support for assigning defaults for certain filetypes.

BorisFX Mocha, Nuke and others also utilize this. This is what that looks like in Mocha.

I believe OCIOv2 even allows the config to be edited in such a way that you can manually assign defaults for certain file types / extensions or names. 

It would be up to the user to edit that, but up to Adobe to implement support for it. Not sure if it does now.

[Chetan Nanda]

Hi @Shebbe , @Lars HAGLUND ,

Currently we do support the default color space assigment based on OCIOv2 rule based mechanism.

Please see the section `Auto assignment of Color space on Import` in the document. 

In sumarry user can modify the OCIO configuration file to specify the rules and we honour those rules on file import.

https://opencolorio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/authoring/rules.html

Please try with this approach and share your feedback.

[Shebbe]

Thanks, I just tested a custom file rule and it does seem to work!

[Lars HAGLUND]

Dear @Christine Goldby

You asked me about my text above, where I wrote:

• Add all the ACES-based "Inverse Display Color Spaces" under "Interpret Footage";
• Add all the ACES-based "Inverse Display Color Spaces" under "Input Color Space" in the OCIO Color Space Transform FX;
• Add all the ACES-based "(Forward) Display Color Spaces" under "Output Color Space" in the OCIO Color Space Transform FX.

Usage examples:

• One needs to import and use archived display-referred video into an ACEScg timeline, that once upon a time was rendered via an ACES RRT + "Rec 709" ODT or via an ACES "P3-D65 ST2084 1000 nits" ODT. Then one must have the possibility to use "Inverse Display Color Spaces" > ACEScg.
• When using an old favourite effect of some kind that needs legacy Rec.709-based video in and out, then one needs to create a dangerous lossy "sandwich" of layers by using the OCIO Color Space Transform FX twice: initially "ACEScg > ACES Rec.709 ("(Forward) Display Color Space"); then the old favourite 0-1 limited effect requiring Rec.709 based video in and out; then finally "Inverse ACES Rec.709 ("Inverse Display Color Space") > ACEScg.

Note, https://opencolorio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configurations/aces_cg.html: "Please note that with OCIO v2 we are trying to be more rigorous about what constitutes a “color space”. For this reason, the new configs do not bake view transforms or looks into the display color spaces. Therefore, it is necessary to use a DisplayViewTransform rather than a ColorSpaceTransform if you want to bake in an ACES Output Transform. This is not only more rigorous from a color management point of view, it also helps clarify to end-users the important role of a view transform in the process. Baking in a view transform is a fundamentally different process than just converting between color space encodings, and it should be perceived as such by users."

Lars: Yes, inverting ACES RRT+ODTs to ACEScg is most often lossy (dynamic range wise in relation to the lost original camera footage), but one must please have the possibility.

Kindly, Lars

[jackthegiantslayer]

So does this mean that the ongoing issue with ProRes footage flickering when using certain color correction tools (namely Lumetri Color) has been addressed? I would really love to have this bug locked down and be able to turn "Enable hardware accelerated decoding" back on so I can use all the power of this maxed out M1 Macbook Pro.

[Christine Goldby]

Hi @jackthegiantslayer . Unfortunately this OCIO work does not include the ProRes issue you mention here. 

[jackthegiantslayer]

Ah, was worth a shot! Thought perhaps it was contingent on this build given the nature of it, thanks for the info.

[SimonBjörk]

Curious if there is access to any of the new features via scripting? If so, is there any documentation?

[Christine24511803xxz8]

Not yet, but stay tuned.

[pat pro]

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

[i_go_by_zak]

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]

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. 

fnord OCIO AENuke

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.

[Christine24511803xxz8]

Hi @i_go_by_zak , and thanks for posting! We are always happy to get new people included in the discussions. And thank you @Shebbe for jumping in with more context. There are definitely more features we will be working on going forward, so it always helps to get your input here Zak to add votes to what needs to be done.

For item 1, there is a discussion earlier on this beta post that starts from one of Shebbe's comments on Oct 18th (unfortunately I don't think I can link directly to it here). We did add a quick fix to help cover the need here, but we will have to continue looking into what the long term UI solution could be.

Item 2, the outputs should be defined by the OCIO config file you are choosing, we don't do any specific changes to certain outputs within those as far as I know. @chetan can correct me if I am wrong here. But we certainly don't want to embed any ICC profiles or change them in any way as we want to keep the input/output consistent with any other application in your pipeline utilizing OCIO with the same configuration file.

Item 3, I do not believe we have a path for this right now. Again I'll let Chetan chime in if I am wrong on that.

[Chetan Nanda]

Hi, 

As @Christine Goldby mentioned for

#Item1 - We have a solution to expose display view transform in Output module settings. Implementig it as an OCIO Display Effect is in our backlog. 

#item2 - This look like a bug. We do not intend to embed any ICC profile in the exported still media once app is in OCIO mode. I will log one internally to fix this,

#Item3 - There is no path for applying looks, again adding an OCIO Look Transform effect is in our backlog along with other feature requests that we have got from user feedback so far.

Thanks for providing valuable feedbacks.

[i_go_by_zak]

@Chetan Nanda, I appreciate the reply. I look forward to seeing how the newer features of ACES and OCIO will fit into After Effects' implementation. I saw today the OCIO was pushed into the production version of After Effects. I did a quick test and I just wanted to point out that the Rec709 color space is still being embedded in "sRGB - Display/ACES 1.0 SDR Video" exports.