JESUS CHRIST, This will help me save like a lot lot of time, wtf man why you only have 28k subs only your contents are gem for C4D users, thanks a ton god bless you and your family
FYI, seems you need to set OCIO to ACES 1.3 in Ae to get 1:1 look from one-click solution in latest Octane, at least in my tests with your directions. Thanks so much for the time and effort you put into these!
Man, are you sure? I'ma test it out. It doesn't make sense since RS and Octane still use ACES 1.2 no? And I havne't notice any major shifts when using 1.2 on both pre and post compositing. But now you got me fucked up, I'll test it out. Thanks!
Great Video! I was a C4D User till I switched to Blender at the beginning of this year, still envy the smooth workflow with rendering out AOVs in C4D. Can't seem to find some good resources tho on how to properly work with AgX renders from Blender in After Effects (like youre explaining for C4D Users, which is a gem). Ill try to replicate your workflow as good as I can haha But I loove the colors man
i have a habit of liking your videos before I even watch, you provide great value, I also think that the difference between aces and agx is the ability to maintain brand colors in blown out (not really blown out but over exposed for the most part) highlights, because aces is built to mimic cameras and film it has a hue shift unlike agx, but personally I prefer aces because it's closer to what I'm used to seeing in photography and film, thanks for the great tips 🌟
In photoshop unused this ColorIO plugin to go from filmic to sRGB. There you run the plugin twice, the second step is I guess basically the same to transform from linear to sRGB. Have you tried that?
I actually very rarely use Photoshop for post, I'm just so used to AE that even for images I use AE. But I'll test it out, it's always good to know that. Thanks!
Thanks for the great tutorial, as always. :) Is there a reason you don't use the build in ACES settings in AE 2023? I did some tests and using an adjustment layer brings up the rendertimes quiete a bit. Not a problem when working on stills but it becomes a factir on large sequences.
Yup when I recorded the video (like 3 months ago, but had crazy schedule delays) AE didn't have that update. So at the end of the video I added the part that shows how to do it in the new AE update. I mention the downsides to using that, but theyre not a big deal and I'll probably be using the new way. I felt it's important to keep the part about the old way since some people don't immediately update their AE cuz of bugs and what not, and also in-case the new way doesn't work for you for some reason (bugs) you're able to do it the previous way.
Hi thanks again for your amazing content! QQ, I'm trying to add a pure white background to my comp in AE but for some reason it shows as a light grey when working in Agx. Do you have an idea on how to fix this?
Yeah that's a good question Kala, it has to do with the value transform the profile has. What you can do is increase the exposure of the background and it'll push it into more white territories
Arent you baking the sRGB color space into the AgX file when selecting "linear sRGB"? A linear Transfer Curve doesnt mean the color gamut is open right?
First off, why not just start straight in Resolve? But unfortunately I'm not that familiar with Resolve, you gotta activate the colorspace in the settings from the videos I've seen but there's plenty of tutorials about that, sorry I couldn't help
@@NewPlastic i'm not really uset to fusion, i usually preferer to composite inside after effects and edit/grade in davinci. but i will check that out, thanks!
Thanks for such a good breakdown!! Do you know of any work arounds for Frischluft Lenscare AE plugin? The results are soo good but the $200 is pretty high for a plugin :(
I know that AE has a default one but I haven't found a way to make it look good. A part of me thinks there's probably an alternative out there but every year or two I look for one and can't find it. And yes $200 is expensive af, and I bought it at a time where I was really really broke. But at that time I was working with Arnold, and rendering DoF was completely impractical beacuse it was so slow. It made a 10 minute per frame into a 2 hours per frame. So I used the plugin on literally every render I had, which made it make more sense to buy. But once I moved to Octane, rendering DoF doens't really affect the render times as much, now I use it more for post-compositing control (since if I render with DoF then I'm stuck with that look)
Definitely not, it might be a bit confusing in the video that's my bad. You can clearly see that 16bit PNG is clipped. Unlike the 16bit float EXR at 7:30 which is clearly not clipped. The float values in the EXR allow for a huge amount of extra data in the file.
@@Gromic2k That's good dude, I''m glad you don't take my word and do your own tests! Are you sure you didn't compare it to the EXR after applying the OCIO? Because the OCIO clamps the data, that's what the render transform is supposed to do. But if you look at the PNG at 16bit straight out of octane, and the EXR 16bit float straight out of octane, PNG is clamped, EXR isn't. Look PNGs were designed to replace GIFs you know what I mean? They're image files designed for web-viewing, not data files. Comparing a PNG to EXR is like comparing a 320 mp3 to wav. Neither is "better" than the other, they each have their own purpose.
@@NewPlastic Yeah i just tried again. Nothing is clamped. Rendered with "Buffer type: 32bit HDR" and "Colorspace: Linear sRGB". Both 16bit. And i know that EXR is the better file format - i use it because of the small file size and the layer system. I just want to understand what's the difference. Because in my opinion, 16 bit is 16 bit. I don't understand a difference between 16 bit integer and 16 bit half float. The amount of data is the same as far is i understand bit rates.
I found tricky thing I could not figurte it out. Let's say I have AE project ACES 1.2 32 bits but what if I need to put some Ai graphics, vectors I created in 8 bit and animate it and keep 8 bit colors?
That's a great question, if you're using the first method I'm showing, than it's not a problem - whatever is ACES has the OCIO plugin on it, whatever is not ACES, doesn't get the OCIO plugin For the second option I show where you use AE's built in OCIO management, yeah that won't work. That's why in projects where I need to use different color-spaces, I still use the first method I show
I am having issues with this, is this workflow just for images as well? or are you just showing what to do for animations? How would I do this conversion in photoshop? For some reason I am not able to export the PNG from Octane with the color space baked into it. I've watched all tutorials on ACES workflow and have all said the same thing about getting the PNG from the Live viewer, or C4D Render viewer, when I follow the steps, it always looks wrong and needs to be converted still, it wont change it to sRGB. Is there anything you recommend? or should I always use after effects? even if I am only wanting to export a PNG as a single image?
I think if you make sure to keep HDR data stuff checked on export, After Effects and Media Encoder will know to do all the necessary transformative calculations. But I never had to do it actually so I don't know for sure
Hm … it all looks correct and vibrand in Ae … but when exporting a video ist kind of washes out the colors. (Frame export looks good). in vlc it looks perfect. but on iPhone/iPad it looks dull. (Stills and Screenshots looking vibrant and right when viewed on iPad/iPhone … so the device is capable of showing those colors. Must happen somehow in interpreting the video file). Do someone know what's happening here?
I was reading that Octane actually doesn’t need to use ACES, because it’s already a spectral renderer, as opposed to Redshift which is an RGB renderer, and thus needs ACES for the added gamut. Have you heard this?
Yes I've read about it, I can't say I understand for sure how it applies since it's a bit too technical for me. I imagine you could probably use a combination of GaussianSpectrum with Highlight compression and Saturate to White to get similar looking tone mapping and avoid hue distortion. But as I mention, I think most of 3D artists want ACES for it's unique rendering transform, it's not better or worse than other ways it's just transforming the HDR color/brightness data in a way that people seem to like. But I'll try to dig a little deeper into this and see what I find out
@@NewPlastic yeah i did some research, basically Octane is able to get the same color range like, within Octane, but ACES is better for pipeline/comping in post. But basically yeah it’s just an aesthetic look that’s especially useful for highlights. I’m coming from Redshift so just trying to wrap my head around it all. Thanks for the reply!
so in the latest AFX it has Aces 1.3 and if ya import the EXR is seems to set everything up (no need for extractor etc and includes a contact sheet etc) is this not desirable or? (note: I love your tutorials/info etc and that's why I'm curious)
Unless you used ACES 1.3 as a render transform in your 3D program, I would try to avoid using it on your renders in post. There are differences in the way versions interpret data and it would probably lead to unexpected results.
@@NewPlastic appreciate ya and that makes perfect sense (though I don’t see the diff between 1.2 and 1.3 note: you can choose 1.2 as well) but what about importing the EXR and letting Aftereffects set everything up? Is there a flaw in that approach that you’ve found? (to be clear, clicking in project and importing the EXR and checking the ‘create comp and contact sheet’ which then automatically imports all the layers and seems to apply all appropriate plugins including cryptomattes etc)
@@NewPlastic sorry I thought I’d add that it seems like adobe just added this ability in the latest versions of AFX and I almost missed it (you won’t get these options if ya drag the files in) I was just curious if you had tried that method and found it to be flawed?
@@NewPlastic also… I’ve been in the industry for almost 25 years now… worked at Mindworks/Digital Domain/Bullfrog/The Orphanage/Computer Cafe and even Station X) etc and thought I knew all the tricks… I’ve learned so much from you recently/I’m fairly new to octane and Cinema and I absolutely love the speed and clarity of how you teach… I’m bad at words but I seriously appreciate you!!!
@@ThemStarliteKids Dude you know what, I've never imported EXRs this way. That's actually super useful, I can't see any reason not to import this way and I'll probably start doing it from now on, so, thank YOU! Haha And I've very happy to hear that my man, really happy to see you connect with my style and that you find it helpful. We never stop learning, especially with the industry constantly changing so fast. Here, I just learned something from you!
How people can tolerate the abysmal ugliness of the jaggy edges when doing extreme DoF in post with just a plain Z-Depth pass, is beyond me. This look would be instantly dismissed from ANY commercial work. After Effects is probably the best tool for motion graphics work, but simply put, the WORST application EVER MADE for 3d layer compositing. No two ways about it; the sooner newcomers realize this, the better for their future work. Adobe won't address the shortcomings anytime soon; it's been like this for more than a decade now.
ACES will definitely not fix bad lighting, I have a whole series of tutorials dedicated to that. But it's not suppose to, it's just a nice render transform.
Don’t need ACES? Seriously? Of course we don’t have to use it but you’d be a moron to not use it. Why wouldn’t you if you’re already rendering 32bit float? You’re argument about light makes no sense. I sort of read this comment as if you have a better workflow you’ve developed which I’m always up to hear.
JESUS CHRIST, This will help me save like a lot lot of time, wtf man why you only have 28k subs only your contents are gem for C4D users, thanks a ton god bless you and your family
Haha we're going up buddy
FYI, seems you need to set OCIO to ACES 1.3 in Ae to get 1:1 look from one-click solution in latest Octane, at least in my tests with your directions. Thanks so much for the time and effort you put into these!
Man, are you sure? I'ma test it out. It doesn't make sense since RS and Octane still use ACES 1.2 no? And I havne't notice any major shifts when using 1.2 on both pre and post compositing. But now you got me fucked up, I'll test it out. Thanks!
@@NewPlastic The one time I used it, yes that was the case. However, I haven't tried to replicate it. I was using the latest version of all
cool one! think i'll try agx in the next project. just to check
Definitely try, I use it a lot
Thanks a lot! Saved this video to bookmarks. I know I will return to it once more while compositing.
My pleasure dude!
Man you are the best !
You are!
Great Video! I was a C4D User till I switched to Blender at the beginning of this year, still envy the smooth workflow with rendering out AOVs in C4D. Can't seem to find some good resources tho on how to properly work with AgX renders from Blender in After Effects (like youre explaining for C4D Users, which is a gem). Ill try to replicate your workflow as good as I can haha But I loove the colors man
Wow didn't know AOVs were difficult in Blender!
i have a habit of liking your videos before I even watch, you provide great value, I also think that the difference between aces and agx is the ability to maintain brand colors in blown out (not really blown out but over exposed for the most part) highlights, because aces is built to mimic cameras and film it has a hue shift unlike agx, but personally I prefer aces because it's closer to what I'm used to seeing in photography and film, thanks for the great tips 🌟
Thanks dude! Yeah I think it's just important to understand the uses and differences so you can make these choices on your own for your projects
Life saver
In photoshop unused this ColorIO plugin to go from filmic to sRGB. There you run the plugin twice, the second step is I guess basically the same to transform from linear to sRGB. Have you tried that?
I actually very rarely use Photoshop for post, I'm just so used to AE that even for images I use AE. But I'll test it out, it's always good to know that. Thanks!
@@NewPlastic the plugin version 2.1.1 works with opencolorio. The older plugin will throw an error if you use newer config file
Thanks for the great tutorial, as always. :)
Is there a reason you don't use the build in ACES settings in AE 2023? I did some tests and using an adjustment layer brings up the rendertimes quiete a bit. Not a problem when working on stills but it becomes a factir on large sequences.
Yup when I recorded the video (like 3 months ago, but had crazy schedule delays) AE didn't have that update. So at the end of the video I added the part that shows how to do it in the new AE update.
I mention the downsides to using that, but theyre not a big deal and I'll probably be using the new way. I felt it's important to keep the part about the old way since some people don't immediately update their AE cuz of bugs and what not, and also in-case the new way doesn't work for you for some reason (bugs) you're able to do it the previous way.
Hi thanks again for your amazing content! QQ, I'm trying to add a pure white background to my comp in AE but for some reason it shows as a light grey when working in Agx. Do you have an idea on how to fix this?
Yeah that's a good question Kala, it has to do with the value transform the profile has. What you can do is increase the exposure of the background and it'll push it into more white territories
@@NewPlastic Thanks Guy!
@@kalacolella605 You got it!
Arent you baking the sRGB color space into the AgX file when selecting "linear sRGB"? A linear Transfer Curve doesnt mean the color gamut is open right?
hey man! whats the best way to export from after effects to davinci resolve to color grade with aces?
First off, why not just start straight in Resolve?
But unfortunately I'm not that familiar with Resolve, you gotta activate the colorspace in the settings from the videos I've seen but there's plenty of tutorials about that, sorry I couldn't help
@@NewPlastic i'm not really uset to fusion, i usually preferer to composite inside after effects and edit/grade in davinci. but i will check that out, thanks!
@@FelipeRisallah just make sure you set your export color space to acescg, and then set up aces/ocio in the resolve settings
Thanks for this tutorial!! :)
Thanks for such a good breakdown!! Do you know of any work arounds for Frischluft Lenscare AE plugin? The results are soo good but the $200 is pretty high for a plugin :(
I know that AE has a default one but I haven't found a way to make it look good. A part of me thinks there's probably an alternative out there but every year or two I look for one and can't find it.
And yes $200 is expensive af, and I bought it at a time where I was really really broke. But at that time I was working with Arnold, and rendering DoF was completely impractical beacuse it was so slow. It made a 10 minute per frame into a 2 hours per frame. So I used the plugin on literally every render I had, which made it make more sense to buy. But once I moved to Octane, rendering DoF doens't really affect the render times as much, now I use it more for post-compositing control (since if I render with DoF then I'm stuck with that look)
7:55 it actually looks like the 16 bit PNG and the 16 bit EXR hold the same amount of color information?
Yep
Definitely not, it might be a bit confusing in the video that's my bad. You can clearly see that 16bit PNG is clipped. Unlike the 16bit float EXR at 7:30 which is clearly not clipped. The float values in the EXR allow for a huge amount of extra data in the file.
@@NewPlastic I just made a test with both and the lumetry scopes look completely identical
@@Gromic2k That's good dude, I''m glad you don't take my word and do your own tests!
Are you sure you didn't compare it to the EXR after applying the OCIO? Because the OCIO clamps the data, that's what the render transform is supposed to do. But if you look at the PNG at 16bit straight out of octane, and the EXR 16bit float straight out of octane, PNG is clamped, EXR isn't.
Look PNGs were designed to replace GIFs you know what I mean? They're image files designed for web-viewing, not data files. Comparing a PNG to EXR is like comparing a 320 mp3 to wav. Neither is "better" than the other, they each have their own purpose.
@@NewPlastic Yeah i just tried again. Nothing is clamped. Rendered with "Buffer type: 32bit HDR" and "Colorspace: Linear sRGB". Both 16bit.
And i know that EXR is the better file format - i use it because of the small file size and the layer system. I just want to understand what's the difference. Because in my opinion, 16 bit is 16 bit. I don't understand a difference between 16 bit integer and 16 bit half float. The amount of data is the same as far is i understand bit rates.
I found tricky thing I could not figurte it out. Let's say I have AE project ACES 1.2 32 bits but what if I need to put some Ai graphics, vectors I created in 8 bit and animate it and keep 8 bit colors?
That's a great question, if you're using the first method I'm showing, than it's not a problem - whatever is ACES has the OCIO plugin on it, whatever is not ACES, doesn't get the OCIO plugin
For the second option I show where you use AE's built in OCIO management, yeah that won't work. That's why in projects where I need to use different color-spaces, I still use the first method I show
What is the solution for the loss of the reflection pass?
Hmm not sure what you mean, reflection pass is still there
Sorry I hope I'm not understanding it wrong. In C4D you can see some "specular" / gloss on the object. But in after effects it appears it's gone.
I am having issues with this, is this workflow just for images as well? or are you just showing what to do for animations? How would I do this conversion in photoshop? For some reason I am not able to export the PNG from Octane with the color space baked into it. I've watched all tutorials on ACES workflow and have all said the same thing about getting the PNG from the Live viewer, or C4D Render viewer, when I follow the steps, it always looks wrong and needs to be converted still, it wont change it to sRGB. Is there anything you recommend? or should I always use after effects? even if I am only wanting to export a PNG as a single image?
woof woof thanks! 🤗😶🌫😮💨🤤
You're welcome dog
great tutorial. What if I need to render out from after a pro res mov with rec 2020 HDR data?
I think if you make sure to keep HDR data stuff checked on export, After Effects and Media Encoder will know to do all the necessary transformative calculations. But I never had to do it actually so I don't know for sure
THANKS !
Hm … it all looks correct and vibrand in Ae … but when exporting a video ist kind of washes out the colors. (Frame export looks good). in vlc it looks perfect. but on iPhone/iPad it looks dull. (Stills and Screenshots looking vibrant and right when viewed on iPad/iPhone … so the device is capable of showing those colors. Must happen somehow in interpreting the video file). Do someone know what's happening here?
I was reading that Octane actually doesn’t need to use ACES, because it’s already a spectral renderer, as opposed to Redshift which is an RGB renderer, and thus needs ACES for the added gamut. Have you heard this?
Yes I've read about it, I can't say I understand for sure how it applies since it's a bit too technical for me. I imagine you could probably use a combination of GaussianSpectrum with Highlight compression and Saturate to White to get similar looking tone mapping and avoid hue distortion.
But as I mention, I think most of 3D artists want ACES for it's unique rendering transform, it's not better or worse than other ways it's just transforming the HDR color/brightness data in a way that people seem to like.
But I'll try to dig a little deeper into this and see what I find out
@@NewPlastic yeah i did some research, basically Octane is able to get the same color range like, within Octane, but ACES is better for pipeline/comping in post. But basically yeah it’s just an aesthetic look that’s especially useful for highlights. I’m coming from Redshift so just trying to wrap my head around it all. Thanks for the reply!
I'm not sure the color transform has something t do with the way the engine works
@@RomboutVersluijs that's not what i said
@@regularmenthol i was targeting the first post
so in the latest AFX it has Aces 1.3 and if ya import the EXR is seems to set everything up (no need for extractor etc and includes a contact sheet etc) is this not desirable or? (note: I love your tutorials/info etc and that's why I'm curious)
Unless you used ACES 1.3 as a render transform in your 3D program, I would try to avoid using it on your renders in post. There are differences in the way versions interpret data and it would probably lead to unexpected results.
@@NewPlastic appreciate ya and that makes perfect sense (though I don’t see the diff between 1.2 and 1.3 note: you can choose 1.2 as well) but what about importing the EXR and letting Aftereffects set everything up? Is there a flaw in that approach that you’ve found? (to be clear, clicking in project and importing the EXR and checking the ‘create comp and contact sheet’ which then automatically imports all the layers and seems to apply all appropriate plugins including cryptomattes etc)
@@NewPlastic sorry I thought I’d add that it seems like adobe just added this ability in the latest versions of AFX and I almost missed it (you won’t get these options if ya drag the files in) I was just curious if you had tried that method and found it to be flawed?
@@NewPlastic also… I’ve been in the industry for almost 25 years now… worked at Mindworks/Digital Domain/Bullfrog/The Orphanage/Computer Cafe and even Station X) etc and thought I knew all the tricks… I’ve learned so much from you recently/I’m fairly new to octane and Cinema and I absolutely love the speed and clarity of how you teach… I’m bad at words but I seriously appreciate you!!!
@@ThemStarliteKids Dude you know what, I've never imported EXRs this way. That's actually super useful, I can't see any reason not to import this way and I'll probably start doing it from now on, so, thank YOU! Haha
And I've very happy to hear that my man, really happy to see you connect with my style and that you find it helpful. We never stop learning, especially with the industry constantly changing so fast. Here, I just learned something from you!
thx
My pleasure!
I'D LOVE TO BE YOUR INTERN !!😬😇
Haha careful what you wish for
@@NewPlastic I think it is worth the risk and a respectable challenge as well. Are you open to giving it a thought?
y tho?
From Socrates, to Nietzche, and now our boy o o, the great old question prevails. y tho.
And y indeed my friend, y indeed.
@@NewPlastic Great reply haha! 😄
How people can tolerate the abysmal ugliness of the jaggy edges when doing extreme DoF in post with just a plain Z-Depth pass, is beyond me.
This look would be instantly dismissed from ANY commercial work.
After Effects is probably the best tool for motion graphics work, but simply put, the WORST application EVER MADE for 3d layer compositing.
No two ways about it; the sooner newcomers realize this, the better for their future work.
Adobe won't address the shortcomings anytime soon; it's been like this for more than a decade now.
You don't need aces, you need to learn how work with light.
ACES will definitely not fix bad lighting, I have a whole series of tutorials dedicated to that.
But it's not suppose to, it's just a nice render transform.
???
Don’t need ACES? Seriously? Of course we don’t have to use it but you’d be a moron to not use it. Why wouldn’t you if you’re already rendering 32bit float? You’re argument about light makes no sense. I sort of read this comment as if you have a better workflow you’ve developed which I’m always up to hear.
You don't need to use Octane, you can just learn how to work with the native C4D renderer from 2011.
You don't need Cinema 4D, you need to learn how to code your own program in Notepad.