You guys can quote Troy as much as you want but (no personal offense to Troy intended here), Troy does not decide what the industry should or should not use. To my knowledge, Troy doesn’t even work in a major VFX studio. I don’t think he works for any VFX shop. He works as a grip on major films. Troy has very strong opinions on everything and I know he is seen for some as some kind of god in the Blender community but he’s but one man with his opinions. And filmic is his baby. So when you talk about ACES, it’s like telling him his baby is ugly.
The switch to ACES was such a benefit for us. And even if the hack implementation in Blender has some issues, I willing to ignore them and continue with ACES. I can’t send bug reports because it’s a hack, not an official release. But there are only two things I would report. The color picker and the render playbacks.
You want to play in the big league? You go ACES. There’s just no way around it.
I second this, there is no point arguing if ACES is good or bad. If it’s not closed source and many people want it, Blender should add it, that’s it, no arguments can change that.
Again, if you have read the “Mea Culpa”, you would know that the “the entire industry has shifted to ACES” is merely an illusion, with the truth being the studios using it are struggling with the output and trying to avoid it, which means it has caused a lot of trouble.
There’s two distinct things here. One part is using linear ACES color spaces for compositing, rendering and file storage. The other is the ACES RRT view transform. You can use one without the other.
We plan to add support for both in Blender at some point. I think the linear color spaces are the most important, and also the most challenging. However adding the ACES RRT is the easiest part and there’s not really any reason not to add it, regardless if it is used much in the industry.
For example I consider FBX to be a poor exchange format, much worse than for example GLTF. Yet it’s been so prevalent in the industry that Blender wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is today if it did not support FBX, despite FBX by far not being the greatest. If we followed the Eary argument, then there would be no point supporting FBX because there are theoretically better formats.
No I posted those images because Brecht said this:
So apparently he doesn’t want to continue the discussion about “following the trend”. So I showed him something other than the discussion about how everyone uses ACES thing.
And you guys apparently want to get back to it
It’s not about getting back to it in a sense of fighting or arguing. You yourself said you don’t understand why many of us would want ACES even though it’s not perfect, so we are just answering that.
It’s because despite not being perfect, after seeing those images, we still want to have option to use same color transform across multiple different software packages. Because for many of us, imperfect compatibility is still better than perfect incompatibility.
I think I will end my participation here. My current end thought is this:
TCAMv2 is so nice (it even kinda works for the Spectral branch except for the white point adaption and Sky Texture) but sadly not open source. OpenDRT seems to be a good candidate, but unfortunately it does not have an OCIO version yet. And there are many issues on Blender’s own side as well. I guess I will see how it goes.
I do not know about everyone but the ones I deal with uses ACES and custom OCIO configs. As a Blender user I need a proper way to handle their configs.
This is not just about rendering, there are other areas like texture painting where such pipelines matter as well.
Those are OCIO issues, right ? Can you explain precisely what does “ACES properly integrated” mean ? In the OCIO config there is a role called “color_picking” that has been implemented in different ways between Maya and other DCC softwares. Which behavior are you exactly looking for ?
Why would you say such a thing ? It has been said on several projects that I linked in my article. I don´t think this is a fair statement.
First, Weta Digital does not use ACES. Then, as I have tried to explain to you several times, ask yourself what does it mean exactly “to use ACES” ? If ACES is only used by VFX studios to exchange files, does it count ?
I don´t have the truth but I try to look for it. It has taken me two full years to appreciate what ACES really does. Please, do the same exercise. It looks to me you are pushing for something that you don´t fully understand.
What does this even mean ? I am pretty sure that what you really want is a good OCIOv2 implementation. I think you are confused about what ACES does and what OCIO does.
You could add them to the OCIO config yourself. You know that, right ? One year ago, I didn´t know anything about OCIO. Now I edit the configs for the studio where I work. Please, just make the effort. it is really worth it. And actually fun to learn !
Again, what does “works in ACES” mean ? If you are using only a small part of the ACES eco-system, does it count ? If they render in ACEScg but display with K1S1, is it worth asking ourselves : why is this happening ? I think your statements are misleading.
Again, what is missing in Blender from the ACES point of view ? If you load an ACES OCIO config, what happens ? Can you work ? Can you describe precisely what is not working and which behavior would you expect ?
I still don´t understand what are you guys looking for ? Which implementation ? A CTL implementation of ACES ?
Did you have a look at the examples on their website ? The blue sphere gets magenta because of the sun light.
I am really sorry, I don´t understand. What ACES part cannot be used through OCIO in Blender ?
So what ? You already commented on his job in the other Blender thread and I think this is patronizing/insulting. So basically only if you work in a major VFX studio, you can have a voice here ? Not cool.
Ask Troy what he thinks about his filmic… Please do.
This sounds like an ad. Weird. You keep repeating these slogans…
Again, what does it mean to add “ACES” ? Can anyone explain it to me ?
Not at all. He is trying to raise some valid points that are worth investigating. I really think that what you guys want is a good OCIO implementation. Then you just use Filmic, ACES, K1S1 or whatever.
The default TCAMv2 config is available for free. Then you just edit it (like any config really) to your needs.
Chris, I’m not going to redo the same conversation we had before.
Yes, Weta is using ACES on a per case basis depending on what the client requires. I asked a friend who works there as a compositor.
When I say nobody uses filmic in the VFX world, you know very well that I mean the major studios, the ILM, Method, MPC, Framestore etc. That’s my universe. If small shop want to use anything else, I don’t mind. They can do whatever they want. In Hollywood, you can’t. You follow the industry.
What I mean by The VFX industry will not adapt to Blender? That means that they will certainly not change their workflow to use filmic. Come on man, you know very well what I mean.
What does working in ACES means? What do you think it means? It’s not like there are 1000 ways to use it. You linearize your footage in ACEScg. The renders are made in ACEScg. The compositing is done in ACEScg. Then you output to whatever colourspace is needed.
As for Troy not working in a major VFX studio, well, if I never worked in a nuclear plant, I’m not going to tell them how to do their job. Chris, you work at Animal Logic! It’s not a small shop. If you get a Marvel job and they tell you that frames are to be delivered in EXR with an ACEScg profile, and don’t get me on the technicalities here, you know very well what I mean, what are you going to do? Tell them ACES is crap because this and that? You know very well that you guys will gear up to work in ACEScg.
We just delivered over 300 shots for Moonfall. Guess what? ACEScg delivered in ACES AP0
Yeah, I sound like a broken record because I keep repeating the same things over and over. When I talk about the major studios working in ACES. I asked all my friends in many of them and they all told me that their composting is in ACEScg. All of them. All the renders are in ACEScg. What about Animal Logic? What are you guys doing for rendering and compositing? I’m really curious to know.
And you know very well what people mean by “add ACES”. And you know very well that it means when people say “working in ACES”.
So Chris, since this is the developer’s forum, could you please make a clear and detailed list of what needs to be done in Blender in order to have a fully OCIO compliment implementation so that ACES (Or any other OCIO config) could be properly Implemented? This would be more helpful than us insulting each other and it would be much more constructive for everyone. Thanks.
I’m guessing since blender internally uses linear and rec 709 primaries the only real difference with acescg is the gammut limit and white point diff. I guessing using the acescg ocio in blender’s current state keeps the colors in the rec 709 boundaries. Am thinking about this wrong?
Sometimes it seems that talking about colors is the same as religion :-). Not sure if a versus discussion will lead to any result.
Personally I would love to see that Blender is able to handle ACES workflow. Not that I see it changing the default color space in Blender, due to compatibility reasons, but having the flexibility would support future development that none of us can oversee right now. Setting up the default color space should be done/decided per project, and the tool should not specify how you should work. I am aware that this isn’t the current situation in Blender.
As the industry is somewhat closed it is not effective that Blender developers would be the problem owner. There is more experience, knowledge and benefits for people/companies working in the “industry”. The experience for me would be more theory than applied, but would like to learn from this opportunity. As Blender developer we could bring the experience of Blender source code and direction where we would like to go on the table.
But being realistic if this is important of the “industry” and Blender being open source I would like to see the industry step up by defining the project and help out in this area. As pointed out in this thread, the main reason is to support studios to use Blender in their pipeline.
I you could do the same, but from the other side. I.e. a detailed list of what you’re missing, that would also be nice.
I’m a complete noob in colormanagement. To me this whole discussion looks like people misunderstanding each other because they are all talking about slightly different aspects of the same problem. It would be very useful to have actual lists of problems instead of all these nebulous preferences
