Does anyone use the "ACES tone mapping" option? Tweet

[boxfx]

Without getting into a mountain of colour workflow, bit depth, file format headaches, has anyone used the simplified "ACES Tone Mapping button on the camera imager tab with any success? It seems to handle highlights and white objects ok, but it absolutely crushes any dark shades into oblivion, rendering it fairly useless to me.

Am I missing something? from what I can tell, that option deactivates almost every other camera imager parameter except for the exposure slider. I almost get the feeling im supposed to enable some sort of linear colour space mode, but I cant find anything that affects the live view to bring dark colours up to anything usable, the plus the manual states it is designed to save out a standard srgb 8 bit image. The only way I can get close is to crank the exposure all the way up to 3 or 4, but by the time the black objects start revealing themselves, the white parts have gone thermo nuclear.

How is it intended to be used, just with 32 bit renders and post colour grading?

[aoktar]

Is this a bug related post?

[boxfx]

apologies, wrong sub forum

[elsksa]

Hi, I'd suggest this ACES Octane "guide" as a reference.

This is the infamous ACES look which may look worse with an unsuited (panel, contrast, etc)/uncalibrated monitor and only the tip of the iceberg. It also skews color wildly. It's quick and dirty to avoid clipping (better than the archaic native camera imager options) but not beneficial as part of the color pipeline.

The page explains how it is meant to be used but I'll spoil it a bit: as a in-rendering (during render previews) image conformation (since the default sRGB EOTF will do as worse but less "pleasingly"). AgX OCIO is the (only*) way to go.

*as the single public and gratis solution in the present day