Color Profile to match Unreal 5.0.3 viewport

[LeandroOliveira3D]

Hi. I found a video talking about how to make viewport in Painter be the same on Unreal: https://youtu.be/Yu8wR4df0IE

But I noted Painter 8.2.0 has a new option:

So, how to tweak Color Profile using the latest version of Painter and Unreal 5.0.3?

[sharktacos]

You should not use the profiles to do this in Substance. That is a depreciated workflow. The current, better, workflow is to use OCIO. To get the same look as Unreal you will need to add a gain of 1.45 to the ACES 1.0 SDR (sRGB) Output Transform.

[LeandroOliveira3D]

@sharktacosThank you for your reply. Could you show me the workflow?

[sharktacos]

Unreal ships with an OCIO config:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/opencolorio-quick-start-for-unreal-engine/

I haven't tested this, but I think you could just load that in Substance Painter.

[LeandroOliveira3D]

Ah yeah. In Unreal I know the process. Ok. I´ll try it in Substance. Thanks.

[default39cmm9oeo4b8]

Could you maybe specify how one can add a gain of 1.45 in Substance Painter to the Substance config.ocio?

Using OCIO in Unreal is sadly not an option for me at the moment.

[Léna Piquet - Froyok · Accepted solution]

I confirm the color profile workflow is indeed deprecated, so I don't recommend using it anymore.

In the case of Unreal, switching the Tone mapping setting to ACES should be enough. I don't recommend enabling OpenColor IO (OCIO), as this will complexify greatly the workflow inside the application.

The ACES curve we use is missing some update, like the bright blue value becoming purple, but otherwise it should be close enough. I'm not aware of a need to shift/apply a gain to the transform to match Unreal viewport.

By the way, when creating a project you can use the Unreal Engine template, it will configure it with the right settings to help match Unreal viewport.

[default39cmm9oeo4b8]

Thank you for the reply!

The need of the +1.45 gain was discussed in this thread, which claims that the Unreal implementation of the Aces tone mapper has this gain applied: https://community.acescentral.com/t/proper-texturing-workflow-for-unreal-engine/3145

To validate, I created a blank scene in Unreal, disabled Post-Processing settings (including the fake wide gamut and the blue correction that were also added to the Unreal tone mapper) except for the tone mapper itself and set the exposure manually to 0. The control scene in Substance is based on the Unreal template with color management set to legacy and the Aces tone mapper enabled. The exposure is left at 0 and no post-processing or any color profile is enabled. Both scenes are exclusively lit by the same HDRI 'Studio White Umbrella' from the Substance library and have matching cameras. The object is a simple plane and the material has a basic color checker texture as base color, metallic 0 and roughness 1. In the first image, you can see the result with no gain/exposure changes in Substance. It is significantly darker. I checked this with a couple different HDRIs. In the second image, I applied a Post-Process Exposure of 1.45 in Substance Painter. This gets it much closer, but there are still value and hue/saturation difference. The differences get stronger with non-studio HDRIs.

In the images, I used the 'Substance' Ocio-config with the Aces tonemapper, but the results are the same with the Aces tone mapper from the legacy color management option. I didn't use Ocio in Unreal, so the working space is linear, too.

Am I missing something with this exposure mismatch?

[rocketboy4666]

Did you ever figure this out? I just tried matching SP to UE5 and it looks different. I used same HDRI from PolyHaven, OCIO Aces 1.2 for SP and still it looks different.