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.

[Chetan Nanda]

@i_go_by_zak , Yes, Changes for not embedding ICC profiles in Stills are not yet pushed to Release / Beta builds.

I will soon update here once we have the changes ready in Beta build to try out.

[Chetan Nanda]

@i_go_by_zak We have pushed the fix for not embedding ICC profiles in exported stills. Please tryout in latest Beta. 

[Christine24511803xxz8]

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!

[Rdanielsdesign]

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

[Christine24511803xxz8]

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

[Filip23315833k75u]

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 😕

[Chetan Nanda]

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?

[Filip23315833k75u]

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

[Filip23315833k75u]

Checked n the latest Beta - same thing:

This is the color picker when working color space is set to ACEScc - it's unusable 😞

[Filip23315833k75u]

Also the color info tab should have two collumns of color data: working space and display space:

This is a pure green color in sRGB space but since the working space is ACEScc the color coordinates reported by the info pallet make no sense to a human being 😉 I do recognize the need to also have the color reported in working space so that's why I propose two separate columns.

That's what an OCIO color picker looks in other software:

With buttons top right you can select if the color bars and graphs are in scene color space (ACES) or display color space (sRGB). In the meantime all inputable color values are duplicated into two columns - scene space column and display space column. They are all interactive, changing one automaticaly updates the corresponding other spinner. At any given time you just see what coordinates a given color has in ACES and in sRGB. It's perfectly clean and simple to use 🙂

[Shebbe]

@Chetan Nanda I don't think it makes sense to color manage the color picker window's color displays. We need to see the colors without conversion, straight to our monitors. I can't think of a scenario where we'd want to see resulting tonemapped colors. If there is, maybe give us an option to switch it instead? What we do need is an option to decide if we want to pick display or scene colors similar to what @Filip23315833k75u shows. And a second color set on the info panel with display referred measurements also switchable between auto, 8bit, 10bit, 16bit, float. Same goes for Lumetri scopes...

[Filip23315833k75u]

Well I'm pretty sure you want the tonemapped colors every single time you enter that window. What you call tonemapped is just you display's color space - sRGB. If you ever get into that window and you have a color in mind or you get color info from the client - it will be in sRGB. The client wants to see his colors on his sRGB monitor, if you want and orange solid layer you want it to look orange on your display - you don't really care what the color values are in the working space - that's for AE to figure out for you. But I do understand it's just my opinion 🙂

[Shebbe]

I meant seeing as in how that square color field looks inside the color picker window which as you showed just doesn't serve any logical purpose if the working space is ACEScc 🙂 I totally vote in favor of being able to choose between inputting display or scene values and even an option to choose the bit depth so we don't have to set the project to 8bit if we'd want to input a client color in the picker.

[Filip23315833k75u]

Ah yes, then agreed 🙂

[Lars HAGLUND]

Thanks Shebbe and Filip,

In addition, as we all are working in a linear light scene-referred working colour volume (ACEScg) we need a colour picker designed to represent colours within a dynamic range better than what the best camera captures.

Adobe's own software Photoshop has a linear light Colour Picker, but the amount of Stops above/below 18% reflective grey are too few in its GUI i guess (see picture):

The currently "best" camera, dynamic range wise, is the ARRI Alexa 35 (see picture):

Perhaps skould a linear light colour picker in After Effects has a kind of future-proof range of +/- >12 Stops above/below 18% reflective grey?

(I.e., one must be able to pick a camera-captured ACEScg colour in the Viewer and then be able to edit the nuance/level in the linear light colour picker).

Kindly, Lars

[Lars HAGLUND]

Note:

I too prefer the "OCIO Color Selector" that Filip showed above! (Much more appropriate than the 32-bit color picker in Photoshop). All I wanted in my text above was to ask for enough camera-based scene-referred dynamic range in After Effects' upcoming "OCIO Color Picker".

Kindly, Lars

[Filip23315833k75u]

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]

Dear Filip, all,

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

Kindly, Lars

[Chetan Nanda]

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.

[Lars HAGLUND]

Dear Chetan Nanda, all,

Yes, the request is all "Invert Display" transforms. Please, your list of IDTs, regarding "Show All" in "Interpret Footage", is IMHO currently overwhelming. Have a look at the GUI of DaVinci Resolve where the IDTs are grouped in a logic way. In the attached picture, you see a group called "Invert Display":

Regarding an additional new "OCIO Display Transform Effect": Please no. Just simply add the Invert Display Transforms in a group to the Input Color Space list, and the (Forward) Display Transforms in a group to the Output Color Space list, of the already existing "OCIO Color Space Transform Effect".

Kindly, Lars

[Shebbe]

Hey Lars, 

I think you are overlooking one thing. Adobe provides OCIO support, not ACES support. This means that whatever options we have within the ACES config are determined by how the configuration file is designed. I think it's a bad idea of Adobe would mess with this config file and/or half intertwine it with how their software works. That what you are suggesting would mean a true ACES implementation but that's outside of the OCIO scope. The point of Adobe's OCIO is to support OCIO color pipelines, not support ACES specifically. They just provide the ACES config default at install now.

We very much need OCIODisplay and OCIOLookTransform as effects. This is standard within OCIO supporting software there's no reason not to want this! Look at how Nuke utilizes OCIO. After Effects needs the same unless Adobe decides to do a true ACES integration.

[Filip23315833k75u]

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]

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.

[Filip23315833k75u]

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?

[Shebbe]

Yes, just tested on my work machine too. Ryzen 5900X, RTX3090, Win11, driver 527.56.

No issues there either. My other machine was old i7 6700K. Perhaps something with Xeon? Do you see a difference between software and Mercury CUDA rendering via project settings?