Only dipped my toes into this topic but I believe most of the criticism here towards ACES isn’t because of the wide collection of input LUTs ACES comes with (they’re useful), but the display transforms.
There is no way to sugarcoat it, those are shite.
Nah, this is not just affecting very few “extreme cases”, especially since most VFX-heavy Marvel/DC shows are suffering from this. Most of those movies or shows have a lot of shots with neon lights, lasers, explosions, or sunsets.
Godzilla vs. Kong, how in hell can this be in a trailer like this:
some other examples from the same movie:
Obi-Wan Kenobi:
The first step is always to educate the people.
Because clearly, most people (working as professionals in the VFX and animation industry) have no clue about this topic whatsoever.
Every single pixel gets overanalyzed in endless pixel-fcking sessions but huge eye-soring artifacts survive completely untouched until the end when people see it on tv or in the cinema.
And the VFX people that actually see the problem are prohibited to do anything about it because:
- the use of ACES is forced by the client
- the old VFX mantra of “never change the plate” and therefore matching the CG to it
As someone working in a VFX studio, the only way to combat this is to secretly and slightly desaturate the highlights of the CG before it goes to the client to avoid those artifacts of the ACES display transform later in the pipeline.
As someone outside the VFX industry (where the use of ACES is not mandatory) we thankfully can use better display transforms like AgX.