jobigoud wrote:
Although it's "wrong" and loses a lot of data it's very common and the shortcomings should be documented.
Question is rather how it ended up being "very common" while it should have never. This is mostly due to unaware and unqualified folks misinforming to others. Hence why, a usually solid reference to follow is in feature film productions and VFX studios. Roughly the same can be done as an individual scale, just simpler with a simplified workflow/pipeline (made easy also thanks to software development being overall user-friendly). In fact(not addressed to jobigoud), many of high-end productions progress is being pushed to the lower spectrum of the industry: at freelancer/individual scale.
There is no reasons to follow improper workflows/pipelines. It's irrational and
will break. Anyone who cares about the work, should not neglect it. It's not more costly nor more time-consuming when all of it is properly setup.
jobigoud wrote:
Another workflow is the same but with a Response curve or LUT applied directly in Octane. The limitations of doing this should be clearly outlined somewhere. The advantage of this approach is you can work on the scene with something that is close to the final look and limit external post processing. Assuming the result doesn't need to be composited with something else.
Many are near clueless of what a LUT is and do, how one is properly generated, etc.
Unlike what most think, a LUT is limited, even in high end productions, its usage is bounded to specific cases and a LUT is never the back bone of a color pipeline. Don't get me wrong, the LUT support in Octane is highly welcomed, as long as a proper LUT workflow is set. Properly creating a LUT can be complex, even for experienced feature film colorists, which are sometimes helped by some rare PhD-scientists on some high-budget productions.
jobigoud wrote:
Another typical workflow is to save to linear sRGB as 16-bit EXR and do color grading somewhere else.
Same for OCIO-based workflows.
That's currently the only proper "linear based" and "non-destructive" way. The post-work isn't necessarily "grading", it can simply be a proper conforming of the EXR light-data to a properly formed-image, which is well handled with Filmic OCIO, more specifically, AgX, recently. Grading is a term to take with a grain of salt in this context. I am referring to the actual color-grading work of a professional colorist, which vastly differ from "post-work conforming".
jobigoud wrote:
Not everyone has Nuke or a dedicated colorist and many scenes aren't going to be composited with anything else in which case the output of Octane is close to the end of the pipeline.
Blender Compositor is free and supports OCIO. Natron as well.
Beauty rendering is absolutely viable and I am in favor of it whenever it is possible (when compositing (AOVs, LPEs) are not requested/necessary).
I'm actually asking people why they export AOVs, many of them do it for no reason but because they saw others doing it. "Beauty rendering" (no AOVs or LPEs) can largely suffice in many cases.
Fusion is free but inside Resolve, I have a strongly biased opinion on this: DaFusion (Fusion inside DaVinci) can lead to more user-error due to the software "blended together" and confusing people because of it.
On that matter, many tend to think that DaVinci will give them the "Hollywood Look" which is also fallacious. "Grading" can be done with a few nodes (even just one ASC-CDL) in a compositing software.
I personally rather recommend Fusion Standalone which is around $300.