I don’t think the need to deal with values higher than 1.0 is a minority, I think it’s quite the opposite, it’s the majoirty.
And yes the recently added convert colorspace node allows you to do so much more, you can build your own image formation protocols with both pre and post formation manipulations! But you can’t expect the majority of the users to build the setup in compositor everytime they open Blender. It just doesn’t make sense.
ur basically arguing against filmic while proposing your own homebrew filmic that only works under arbitrary restrictions
W
Why, it’s two nodes and allows for much more better results, whilst not hiding in the viewport potential issues that lead to longer render times (like nuclear level lighbulbs or light sabers that increase render times dramatically). Takes less than 10 seconds to drop down, and now the compositor’s output can affect the viewport the user can just enable or disable the compositor option in the render settings to check between standard and whatever they’ve done in the compositor (whether that be using one of the colourspaces, or manually doing it with curves etc)
You are just moving the view transform to the compositor here. Again this is great because you can now do post-formation manipulation. But expect users to do this every time they open Blender is non-sense.
I am waiting for your improved version BTW. I am a bit curious whether you can discover the AgX approach in the compositor.
colour grading/correction yourself works under all situations, there are no restrictions. filmic etc are just automatic methods to do stuff that you can do yourself with more control, and without the image being forced to have a filmic quality to it, which in my opinion looks drab and miserable.
But anyway, I’m not against using filmic, I’m just against using it in the render panel because it changes the result of your intentional grading, and also hides issues with albedo and lighting that lead to longer render times.
To be fair, both “Standard” and “Filmic” does it. Quite frankly, every image formation protocols would change things. It’s just a matter of which one is more sane. Both “Standard” and “Filmic” have orange above 1.0 shifting to yellow, you have never actually used a bright orange lighting in Blender, because every time you use it, it becomes yellow. The notorious six. That’s why a while back in another thread I said:
Anyway, this escalated 
I’m going to leave it there…for now! 
:eyeglasses:
I thought we were talking about defaults…
Filmic and AgX are mostly usefull with highdynamic range lighting,to avoid clipping that occour with standard CM.
On the left Standard view,right side AgX
you are building your own pipeline that might not be consistent in different apps and footage types
If you point your camera towards the sun the color channels start clipping then go to white ; you can try to do this your self with srgb but jumping to diff programs might not give you the tools to be consistent.
Filmic log was to be the so called work horse, because you don’t need the luts (which is available) to grade it (to much for beginners) in a decent program.
Blender fumbled the ball when switching to filmic by not giving us better color management tools. Now that we at least have the colorspace convert tool they plan to switch to acescg pipeline. Colormanagement tools will stll be important because ocio will allow people to choose their pipeline.
Having additional looks is for filmic would not have been a bad idea , but it might be to late for that. The creator has moved on to working on something better and filmic might stay around in blender for compatability (if even)
the previous film looks were removed because they were meant for a specific color and transfer function input to be correct , so they landed in the realm of creative looks use in blender (nothing wrong with that , but people didn’t know)
Iike I stated, they plan to change from filmic as the default, so no need to worry about for those that don’t like it. Just fight for more color management tools in blender
The main issue with using a compositor to do the fixes yourself in post (Addressing all users here).
Is that you are using a compositor to do the fixes yourself in post.
Until we will have a compositor that can handle such things in real time, We are playing a guessing game on how things will end up looking, As mentioned, Rendering takes time, And you may need to give the scene another render since you will no longer have the information you need to work on in post (An obvious example is rendering with bad lighting)
I still don’t get the issue here in this topic its all about (I could easily create a discussion called : “Standard as default is hurting users experience”). but i am happy that color management is getting attention.
I read your new comments, you really added an new approach to the topic and this is so smart, you are really good. Thank you for the practical info that is really useful. I ll give it a try to ur approach,
What do u mean by ‘‘m current version of AGX’’? Have u made some changes to AGX (Troy Sobotka’s Github version)? What kind of changes did u do if u did? I just wonder
I made a lot of changes. Though the latest ones are inspired by Troy posting his new results.
You can try it out if you like:
Ahh I just noticed eary_chow in BA was you. Thank you I will check it out.
By thee way, Changes are just about the LOOKS side of things like adding new files to LUT folder and adding them to config LOOKS section OR changes are made for the AGX’s view transform and other things in config file?
(Edit: Yes I saw the changelogs in github, so I guess the answer is both)
And where can I find Ur AGX with v11 because AGX v11.9 in BA comparisons look so saturated, I prefer less saturated. Would u mind providing link for v11 as well? The link u sent me is v11.9 or is it a higher version than v11.9 that revert back to BT.709?
(as far as ı read BT2020 cause saturated colors, I think it removed the benefits of AGX on making the abney effect and de saturating highlights that gave detail and contrast and more differentiation to small highlights on scenes)
I plan to release a v12 soon, but for the moment just download it directly from the main repo.
I tried BT.2020 working space and because Blender currently doesn’t have backwards compatibility design for working space change, the RGB inputs are not properly converted. After some negative feedbacks I decided to move back to BT.709 working space for now. The main repo is already back to BT.709.
Ahh thank you. so the last link u sent here is some kind of v12 release
Yes I agree, 709 looks fine I think, not a bad decision
That was a long and weird discussion to read :o My two cents, probably too late ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Noobs will do weird and wrong stuff no matter what. Considering that the current average Blender noob is probably rendering for tens of hours a plastic donut in 8k resolution and 3 samples because denoising exists (exaggeration intended, but not far-fetched). IMHO, values should be chosen for the target user of the software. Blender aiming to be a production suite, it makes sense to set it up that way. User-noobyness is quite low in the priority for changing the default values of a production software when it’s not something harmful (like unwanted data loss or crash).
Experienced users can make their own jam whatever the default values. Some might prefer Filimc, some sRGB, some install completely different color management. What’s the best default in that case? sRGB? Filmic? Another like ACES? Who knows. The BF chose Filmic, it suits some people and not others, so what? So did sRGB and so would any other one.
Arguing about whether you can make good pictures in whatever color management sounds kind of irrelevant to me.
Even with the right tool, most people will still not use them to their full potential. Even in high budget productions with experienced staff and enough time to do their craft, weird things make it into the final cut. And, for the average creator/consumer, they don’t really make the difference, sometimes not even if you point it out for them with a magnifying glass and 1:1 comparison.
Then, we didn’t wait for the existence of high bit depth images and color management to be able to make good images. You could make the same kind of weird arguments with any technology that came after another. Raytracing for example, we didn’t wait for that to be able to make realistic renders on scanline renderers and whatnot, shall we now say that Cycles as default is therefore hurting people because way longer to render and requires a master’s degree in physics?
Outside NPR and video games industry, so far I haven’t heard of many modern CGI production that worked in sRGB, I definitely know a few independent people making their own content this way, but mostly because they do it all from start to delivery in Blender, and/or don’t care much. So my guess is that, there are users for both, and it’s up to the BF to decide which public they want to aim first.
At the end of the day, the artistic freedom is in that we have plenty of tools, each with their own potential and limitations, and we can chose to work with any we want at any time.
That was my two cents. Sorry for the long bloc’o’text.
On another note, where does Agx come from? I started hearing about it around a week ago but I can’t find much information about it. Is it Troy’s new thing, or some CM from a company, or…
Originally came from Troy’s idea to make a Filmic v2 (AgX is the name of a chemical used in Film photography, so AgX the name is like an alias of Filmic). He mentioned that back then when he was making Filmic, the users back then were so attached to sRGB inverse EOTF that they were pushing against things that are not similar to the sRGB transfer function (ironically this thread is entirely a reincarnation of that). So he made Filmic to be similar to sRGB inverse EOTF, it was a compromise at the time, and we are now trying to make something better. Note AgX is still just considered as a “middle step”, as hopefully something even better can appear in the future.
So Troy’s version was the original AgX, I have a version of AgX that I hope one day can get merged to Blender master. We are still exploring though.
Thanks for the info. I have yet to spend more time trying it, but at a glance it looks intersting. Keep up the good work!
