As for post blur: I don't know how this works in ACES, but one tip I found somewhere on youtube years ago is to add two gamma adjustments when doing your blurs to make sure the highlights aren't lost. I can't remember the operation off the top of my head, but it's something like: 1: Add exposure effect and pull the gamme all the way down as close to 0 as it gets. (0.01?) 2: Then do your blur operation. 3: Then add another exposure effect and correct the gamma back up to normal values. (I think setting gamma to 10 puts it back) This makes sure your highlights stay bright and don't get darkened by the blur operation. This might be built into the Lens Blur effect, and therefore isn't useful anymore.
Thank you very much for your comment and your insight 🙏 This is the awesome thing about floating point renders & operations. As such tricks are not necessary anymore. Since the EXR holds brighter then white values and the blur also is float (or as its declared in AE, 32bit) it will take into consideration the intensity of each pixel. Its basically the same as taking a photograph in real world. Small intense highlights have so much energy they stay much more visible even when blurred either by motion blur or by depth of field. So if the pixel in the EXR is bright enough. It will form it´s own little bokeh highlight 🙌🙌
I use Immigration from AEscripts to import exr sequences. It will collapse the sequence so you only see one file per pass. It has a lot of other helpful features, so I think it's worth the price in the time it saves.
@@SilverwingVFX By the way if you don't want the immigration plugin: You can also SORT BY DATE in your explorer, that way all of the different passes are right under each other so there''s no scrolling through thousands of EXRs involved!
Awesome video, Raphael! Thank you for the explanation of your approach. Could you, please, give some explanation how to work correctly with color picking and importing regular sRGB images (i.e. jpeg, png, etc.)? I couldn't get the same colors from another designer's artwork by picking it with the eyedropper. Everytime I have slightly different results. Also, I didn't manage to have the right color space for sRGB images that I've imported into After Effects. But the 3D renders are great and don't differ from what I've had in Cinema 4D. It's a bit frustrating. Thank you in advance :)
Thank you very much Roman, I very much appreciate your reply. Color Picking really depends on what you want to pick. It´s important to know that color picking colors off of your comp works through the "Display Color Space" so the colors of your working space are picked correctly. sRGB images: In most cases you want to bring those into your working space. So in those cases you just use "Interpret Footage" "Color" "Matte Paint sRGB Texture" This gives you the right colors, but due to the aces sRGB or Rec.709 tonemapping it appears a bit darker then the original image. sRGB Brand Colors: This should really only be done for inputs where its important to keep the exact colors and the exact brightness levels. e.g. client logo cards etc. It will destroy the whole purpose of ACES if this is done for every sRGB input: To get the same output as input you have to go though a reverse transform. "Interpret Footage" "Color" and then "what ever you chose as output" e.g. "sRGB - Display/ACES 1.0 SDR Video" Or in my case "Rec-709 - Display/ACES 1.0 SDR Video" This will send the image backwards through the transform so when you transform it back from ACEs to e.g. Rec.709 it comes out as it was going in. As said, this should only be done in very special cases. Hope this helps. Cheers, Raphael!
One of way to import multiple sequences to AE is to just drag and drop folders that contain sequences in project panel. This way you can import multiple sequences at the same time
Oh, that sounds pretty handy. Thank you for letting me know. Today I certainly learned a lot from people what different methods there are to import multiple sequences. Including yours. Cheers and an awesome start into the week to you 🙌
To import all passes in one go from the "Import File" dialog, press Ctrl+A to select all files and the "Sequence" checkbox will change to "Multiple Sequences".
I know there is a bunch of different tutorials on youtube; but as i said on twitter, i have misophonia, and all of the tutorials have lip smacking in the video. you're the only guy that cuts it out :( help me all mighty raphael!
Hey Bulba. Thank you very much for your comment 🙌 Very much appreciate it! I certainly write it on my tutorial list. I think it will not gain so many views. But sometimes it´s sill good to have the less popular videos. Cheers and a great rest of the week to you! Raphael
Hey, really simple way to import all EXR sequences... Select one file, press Ctrl + A to select All files, and now the checkbox that previously read, "Open EXR Sequence" changes to "Multiple Sequences"! Check that and you're done
Amazing. Its very interesting to hear about all the ways people told me how to import image sequences today. There are definitely more ways then I thought. Thank you very much for adding your method to the arsenal 🙌️
Loved your video and learned a few nice tricks, as usual! I still feel that it’s a bit easier to use the previous ACES workflow, with an adjustment layer, because once it’s setup you don’t have to go back and forth in the comp settings, and the « after effects » layer can go on top of the ACES layer in the same comp. Also, I use AgX now. I love the fact that you can adjust your lights afterwards, but I rely on octane denoise too much to render and use noisy passes… maybe I should denoise afterwards, but I’m not convinced with the denoisers I found. My workflow is biaised because i use a lot of cryptomattes and color correct each object separately. I think what you do is more accurate and fun actually! The chromatic aberration is a very nice tip, love that :) Finally, I usually use noise instead of grain because it’s faster in Ae, but I know noise is prettier!
Thank you very much for your comment and the insight in your workflow. The noise trick is actually pretty cool. Have not thought about that before. And yes. I bet Adobe could make grain instant if they just would make it GPU accelerated. Its a dinosaur of an effect. It looks gorgeous but takes forever on the CPU indeed! About denoisers. Yeah I think when it comes to fireflies and those sharp highlight grizzles Octane does an amazing job. Most of the post solutions I know can´t deal with those. I personally have a very different workflow as I never denoise in final renders 😇 I use neat video and it does a pretty great job if your renders are medium noisy. What´s cool there is that I can denoise light passes that are noisy and don´t touch those who are even. In the end what is missing with Octane is a post denoise so you could choose what pass to denoise. I bet that would be very helpful to a lot of people. Great to hear that you still learned something 🙌 Cheers and an awesome start into the week to you! Raphael
@@SilverwingVFXI have a few still images / key visuals for product renders that I wanna use to try new things that I learned from your video, and the idea of using Neat Video (that I own but don’t use often) for one or two light passes only just made it to the list! I don’t know if you realize how much you’re helping the community: your tips help on a daily basis, on every step of a project from the moment we launch C4D to the final image out of the compositing software. I improved a lot my workflow thanks to you, and I’m super grateful.
amazing as always Raph!, i enjoyed this one, very practical, I like that you kept it vanilla instead of using plugins, I tried many workflows over the years, comp in after effects then cc in resolve is one of them and it gave me the best "tactility" in terms of color grading and mimicking film, however the more deadlines get closer the more i stick to only aftereffects and that led to me discovering redgiant looks, it has it's caveats but what i like about it is its versatility so to me it's more like this footage>denoise>basic CC (if needed)>RG looks, and man figuring out the encoder problem really is tricky i haven't used encoder for like 2-3 years because of that bug, thank you for figuring that out, also a quick tip you can (shift+double click) to create a perfect shape that fits the comp vertically; it was a pleasant experience going through your workflow and picking up a new knowledge here and there, wish you a great week ahead🖼
Hey Zaidi, nice seeing your comment here. I very much appreciate it. Thank you very much for letting us know your workflow. Very interesting with Red Giant Looks. Its nice to see that plugins are picking up color space awareness. About the Shift + Double Click. Ohhh that´s super handy. Thank you very much for letting me know. I always wondered if there was a way 🙌 Thanks so much for your positive messages. I always love to read them. Cheers and a great start into the week to you too ✨🎞️✨
of course man, i appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience with all of us, it's motivating and inspiring, and it seems that I stuck to my habit of picking the wrong emoji haha 🎞 I blame it on windows 😂@@SilverwingVFX
Very nice see how you composite in AE. I glad to saw it is very similar to what I do, but I took some tips as always! And the Console FX is, for me, the best plugin for AE. Thanks, see you! 🎞🖼
Hey hey and thanks yet again for such a positive comment. Thanks so much. Appreciate you like the tut and that you have a similar workflow 🙌️ And got to agree. FX Console is the best plug for AE. Even more so since it´s free ✨️
Hey there. Thank you very much for your reply and your help. Highly appreciated. I did not know that this was possible until people started pointing it out here ha ha. One never stops learning!
Instead of double-clicking to import, simply drag and drop the render folders (main, post, li1 etc) all at once from explorer into AE. your explorer shortcuts are very handy too! 🖼🎞🖼
Hey Yassin. Super nice seeing your comment here. And thank you very much for your answer to my question. That´s a good one 👏 And yay ✨🎞️✨ Appreciate it!
Thanks. Yeah I should use that shortcut more often. Though I would reuse this one "adjustment layer" solid anyways. So it would be only good for the first time creating it 😇
@@SilverwingVFX You're right as it creates a new solid every time. But I also found that by double clicking on the rectangle tool it creates a shape layer with the exact size of your comp and u also can convert it to adjustment layer with the benefit of not creating any solid layers in the project files.
Do you know how to export an HDR video using ACES in after effects? Every tutorial is about exporting SDR videos but when I try and use ACES and export HDR something goes wrong somewhere in the process and the values get scrunched down to SDR
Hi and thank you for your comment. The most easy way to save ACES with HDR values is to disable all conversions in the end and then just render out a .EXR image sequence. I don´t think that there is a video format that can encode floating point. Of course there is for HDR TVs. As far as I know Davinci is the best suite to grade and export for HDR displays if this is what you are after. Hope I could help you a bit at least 🙌
Hey, great explanation of the workflow. What do you do if you want to bring in an additional asset into the comp, that already has a set colour space and the client would like that asset to look exactly the same? (just as an example, maybe a company logo added in, with specific colours)
Hey Chris thank you very much for your question. What you would do in that situation is a reverse transform. That means you bring in the footage without any transforms. So in "Interpret Footage" set the input to "Preserve RGB" Then in the comp load the Color Space Transform effect. Instead of going from sRGB to ACEScg you go from your output profile to ACES. So choose exactly the same profile that you are going to use as output e.g. "sRGB - Display" or, as in the video, "Rec. 1886 Rec. 709 - Display" If course this implies that your source should be sRGB color space. If you do it correctly you will end up with very high brightness values in your comp. But the final transform transforms all the values back so you end up with (almost) exactly the same image that you put in! Hope this helps!
Thank you very much for your comment and your question! As you probably know the ACES workflow is rather complex and consists of many different steps. I am guessing you are engaged in the same workflow that I show in the tut but in the last step you are exporting a sRGB tone mapped Pro-Res instead of a MP4? Unfortunately I am usually not exporting to Pro-Res, so I do not know any quick solution inside After Effects. I know that Pro-Res can look a little different in some windows players if your open it. But does not show a difference when opened back up in another editing application e.g. After Effects, Premiere or DaVinci. If this is not the case and your Pro-Res is just looking off no matter where you open it up, what you can do is export your whole animation as an image sequence and then open it up in either an encoder program or AE again and then encode it to Pro-Res. That should work. If you are trying to save ACES without tone mapping to Pro-Res, this would not work because for ACES to work the images have to be able to store above white values which is only possible with Floating point image sequences (e.g. 16bit float EXRs or 32bit EXRs, Tiffs etc.) If I did not catch the right answer to your question, you can write me what you are doing and how the output differs from your expectation and I will try to further help you! Cheers.
Hey Raphael, great video as always. Two questions: 1. In C4D you are using the sRGB look transform for ACES? Why not already in Rec? 2. I learned that in order to color correct you would need to colorspace transform into AcesCC. So AcesCg->AcesCC->Lumetri or whatever-> AcesCC->AcesCG. Is that right or is it obsolete?
Hey there and thank you for your comment. Appreciate your questions! 1: You are right. Usually I use a config.ocio here to have access to the Rec.709 ACES transform. You could argue that I wanted to see the more contrasty look of the sRGB transform because I was going for a more contrasty look in the end. (I use the "one click ACES solution inside Octane that gives me the ACES sRGB transform) The simple truth is that the file I am using for my renders is last weeks Patreon file that I prepared. Since the config.ocio has to be linked by the user to show up, I wanted to avoid errors on the user side and therefore used the available tools that already come with Octane e.g. the ACES sRGB one klick solution. 2: You are right here too! If you do sophisticated grading work, you would convert your ACEScg to ACEScc or ACEScct (log format). And you are able to do that. I just simply am very used to doing my whole "grading" with curves and also in linear space, because I am used to that from the the time when there was only the "Linear Workflow" So I would say it really depends on the sophistication that you want to put into grading. For me, having a good render as my basis, as strange as it sounds, Curves in linear space always were enough for me 😇 Cheers I hope this helps a little, a great start into this week to you! Raphael
hi, think i can maybe explain the second one, so some tools are not colorspace aware in aftereffects, meaning they apply the same math without taking the color space into account, like when you mess with the exposure on acesCC/CCt things get messy and out of control, I believe that's because the lumetri effect is working on none linear footage, this is why I use RG looks as an alternative because it takes into account your colorspace's input and output, so if you don't want to use RGlooks, you can edit your exposure in the linear spaces (acescg, linearsrgb, ...etc) then convert to a log space like acescc/cct and do the color tweaks there, also take into account post effects like motion blur and dof look better when done in linear too, I hope this helps, cheers!
Very nice explanation. All this shitting behavior made me go out After Effect, I just switched to DaVinci Resolve, and it solved all these color issues. I don't have time to wait for Adobe to do their job.
Thank you very much. Your reaction is totally understandable. I usually comp in Fusion Studio nowadays too. I also have a DaVinci license and should look into it more. Cheers and a great 2024 to you and happy working in DaVinci!
21:25 That's how you do it. However I don't even precomp anymore. I turn on effects and masks and use alpha to drive it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a freelancer try to add an edge blur to a comp by simply masking the adjustment layer. It doesn't work! It looks terrible! Don't do that!
Thanks a lot. Appreciate you agree with me 🙌 And thank you for letting me know that this would also work without precomping 🙏 And yes. I know those cases where people try to blend. It mostly looks off because you do not have different blur states. As you say, it´s just a blend between tack sharp and one blur state... no in between.
Hi, Raphael, I was watching this video (the final part) several times, trying to understand, what am I doing wrong. I see the very same image in AE and im ME, but when I open the exported image in PS, I still see the color/luminance shift. Finally I've found out why - there is an option in ME preferences - "Display Color Management" disabled by default. If I turn it on, ME preview looks the same as the image after export. And now I can not get Images to be identical in AE and ME (with display color management turned on). It looks less saturated and darker in ME. I'm wondering if this option was turned on or off, as you was recording this tutoral? It starts to drive me crazy - I have very consistant results through the whole pipeline, but just can not export what I'm seing in AE...
Hey there and thank you very much for your comment and your questions. Unfortunately this is a bit of a difficult and seems to be changing with Adobes updates. I had multiple people reach out to me here with questions about the workflow. And found it fascinating that there could be so much different experiences with the seemingly same settings! First your comment sounds to me as if you are exporting an image and not a video. Is that correct? If so, I think you will fare better by just exporting the image out of After Effects and not through Media Encoder. Unfortunately I do not have a clean answer to the question. Where did you find the "Display Color Management" option in Media Encoder? I only know this from After Effects... there It's grayed out because of the 32bit ACES workflow. Sorry I could not really help besides giving you the tip of exporting images straight and not through Meadia Encoder. If you like, let me know if you find a solution, so I can maybe help other requests better 😇
@@SilverwingVFX Thank you very much for an answer. Yes, I'm exporting a still image and it does not matter, if I export it with Media encoder or direct from AE. It still looks faded out if I open it with Photoshop or other color managed software. The option in Media Encoder is located in "Edit->Preferences->Color". I'm using ME version 24.2.1 Build 2. I've tried your solution with grayed out checkboxes in AE, but everything was adjusted, as you show in a video. It seems, that AE still shows not the right image, and I've tried every setting I could thing of. But the image in AE looks exactly the same, as in Octane viewport. Sure, I can adjust the image afterwards in Photoshop to look approx the same, as it was in AE before export, but it's not the way it sholud be ) I'll spend several more hours today, if I find the reason, I'll let you know )
Btw, I use wide gamut displays, and use rec2020 view thransform in Octane and in AE. But I've tried to calibrate my displays to sRGB, and used sRGB view transforms - the image still shifts colors after I export it ((
@@dopeless Thank you for your huge message and describing where to find the settings. Display color management is turned off for my Media encoder. And since I have not changed it since the tutorial I am guessing it was turned off back then too! Are you by any chance on a Mac. I have heard from other people that had sort of the same problem and they were working on a Mac platform. The trick was there to assign the right sRGB image profile to the output image from After Effect. Not sure if this helps. But this is the only thing I can think of right now.... If something else comes to mind, I will let you know.
@@SilverwingVFX I'm on Windows, but because of wide gamut displays, the problem can be of a same nature. To assign the right sRGB image profile seems absolutley logical to me, and I was trying to do it too, but I didn't found how🤔I'm updating AE and ME right now (minor updates, but still) and will try to do something with this bit of informatiin )
It worked perfectly … BUT hear me out: So … I followed every step. And indeed it looks exactly the same in AfterEffects as in my C4D preview. Nice. At least when previewing as sRGB in AE (instead of Rec709). But of cause. (Can I somehow change the view in C4D to Rec709 instead of sRGB?) Anyway. When previewing and adjusting everything in the Rec709 view (via DisplayTransform), but switching to sRGB right before exporting, than my video matches exactly the colors i have seen when i was in Rec.207 view. (Exporting H264 in Rec.207 Deas it have to be this way? Why do I have to swicth back to sRGB before rendering? But ok … i can live with that. Maybe it has to be this way(?) But anyway. Colors match … so everything is fine … i guess …but … But: watching it on Macs preview it really washes everything out a ton. I‘ve read that this is a Mac issue. Ok. But when sending it to my iPhone and watching it … everything is washed out too and even the hue seems off. Then sending it to my iPad. Same file. And here it got it's next completly different look. All in all ist a bit of a bummer to go all these miles just to see, that it will look (very) diffently depending on the programm and/or device it is seen on. I mean even iPhone and iPad (both not old) differs very much in side by side comparsion. So … why bother in the first place? Or am i getting something wrong here?
fyi: when using the iPad as a second monitor and shifting AE to it's display. Colors seem vibrant and original. Still not same as in C4D tho. But much nearer, than via watching the video file. Why is VLC showing the MP4 perfect but on the devices it so different? (PS: VLC on iPad also is washed out)
@@bodobanali Hey Bodo, thank you very much for your comment! First Rec.709 in C4D. You can watch this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZIXceP3CKWI.html It´s the old way how you do ACES in Octane. If you load in your ACES .ocio file in the octane OCIO color management. It will also let you choose the ACES to Rec.709 tonemapping. About your problem with the colors. I think it comes down to a couple of factors (provided that your image output is correct): The file type and its specifications that you encode your video in. The player with which you are watching your video. The color management of your operating system. The color management of your screen / monitor. If that all lines up, then you should have a good experience. With correct contrast / colors. No matter where you watch. You are talking about Exporting H264 in Rec.207 in your comment. Do you mean Rec.709... because I am not familiar with an Rec.207 The important thing to know is that this workflow does not have an extended color space at the end. With the ACES to sRGB or ACES to Rec.709 conversion you convert the colors back to "normal video colors" and therefore you should not have different results on different screens (apart from calibration differences) So in other words you should export a Rec.709 video. This should behave like any other video in your workflow and look the same as other normal videos on all your devices. Might be that you have some difference in coloring / contrast etc. Because of the usual small differences from one display to another. When you export your video, the best container to do so is (in my humble opinion) .mp4 if you go for .mov it can start to look strange (too bright) on windows machines. Make sure the export color space is set to Rec.709 in the encoder and HDR is not enabled. Not sure if this helps you. Might be that it´s just a normal color mismatch between the screens that needs to be calibrated. P.s. the main reason you do the ACES workflow is not to get more accurate colors on your screens. As said above this mainly comes down to the settings and quality of your screens calibration. It comes down to the ability to comp your passes correctly, have amazing latitude when grading and mostly (at least with ACES to sRGB / Rec.709 tonemapping, get a amazing color rendition for highly saturated colors, highlights etc. that, even when your screen displays the colors slightly different (for whatever reason) should look vastly superior over an usual sRGB workflow. Cheers and a great mid of the week to you! Raphael
@@SilverwingVFX oh. Thank you very much for your reply. I am stuck a bit in that rabbit hole here and in need of help. Here is a fairly text with some observations. But to shorten it down: My maybe conclusion/question boils down to: Do I have to embed that profile (sRGB or Rec.709) into my exports? And if so, how? Here is my road to that idea: First: Yes. I meant Rec.709. 'was just a typo. Sorry. And it's not, that everything looks totally off and terrible. Its more a suttle thing. And it won't totally break the deal. But still bothers me big time. Just because. And its interesting somehow. So I testet further and made some observations: In the Media Encoder (at 27:08 in your vid) the preview looks 100% like my Viewport in AfterEffects. (I've layered Screenshots in Photoshop to compare. And its 1:1 perfect.) So I imagine, until this point I might doing everything right (!?). Right!? More observations: Weird: When screenshotting the video playing in VLC and throwing that into my Photoshop-comarisson-layer-stack I can see: this also seems to match exactly. Why does it look right in VLC? + Interesting: When reimporting that exported MP4 or one of my exported stills back into my Ae scene it also color-matches perfectly. (After adjusting that footage’s media color space as ACES in the footage interpretation options) So … can it be that it IS indeed the same color somehow afterall? At least in this two cases, my exported stuff matches perfect. But if so: How it comes that it looks so much different when I compare an Ae-Viewport screenshot and an exported still through Photoshop. Or other picture viewers. Or both of them on the same iPhone. Are they interpreted/read wrong? In Ae I tell the software how to interpret the still. VLC maybe also knows somehow?! Maybe the other programs missing that info? Photoshop says there is no profile embedded when I open up a still. So it might misinterpret what’s inside? Also maybe that Picture viewer inside my phone. Maybe it could be obvious … but: Must there be a profile (sRGB or Rechnung.709) be embedded in the exported file? Do I have to embed it manually? But the „Embed Color Profile“ is greyed out in comp. Render output settings + in ME also have no option for that with H264/MP4.
@@bodobanali Thank yo for your long write down. Usually if images do not have a profile assigned, the software usually concludes that it is sRGB. Because that's what most images color profiles are. Also, if you are not on a apple device, the internet is just all sRGB. At least when I last checked, most browsers do not know how to interpret color profiles. So I am not sure what goes array when exporting the file in AE. Would be interesting how a rendering would look that you save out of C4D. I show how to save and bake in the color profile into the the image in the "ACES One Click Solution" here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-g-PqaZdBS94.html If you save your image through C4D and Octane. Does that match with with your live viewer when opened in Photoshop. Speaking of Photoshop. That reminds me that I had mis matched colors too in Photoshop. And the reason for this was the Adobe CC color settings. (I think you can set those globally in the Bridge Application) There, the color settings were set, to interpret footage that had no color profile to be AdobeRGB. So I set the presets from "Print Europe" to "Web/Internet" It´s worth checking those if the only app that interprets your images differently is Adobe Photoshop. All in all I think this is something you have to figure out on your own. Since I do not have access to a OSX equipped device. And judging from your comments it looks like you are moving forward with your research. So all I can really say is the best of luck to you to get this sorted out. If I think of something that might help. I will write it here. Cheers, Raphael
@@SilverwingVFX i'll check all of those tipps out. Again: thank you very much for your patience and willingness to help. A big topic for me still is the issue of not having this „embed color profile“ checkbox and if that's a/the key element in all of this. (And why it's missing for me.) But for sure i learned a lot through your videos and even if it's not 100% accurate in all applications, for sure my renders are looking much(!) more vibrant and strang than they did 2 days ago. So thank you very much for the effort of putting knowledge on youtube and helping others!
Optical flares might give off the wrong colors. But otherwise it should work. You could work around that by transforming the layer with optical flares from linear sRGB / Rec.709 to ACEScg via the OCIO Image Transform effect. Hope this helps 🙌✨
