Monitor calibration question for C4D + Octane's live viewer

[Micahhesse]

I've got a wide gamut (143% sRGB) monitor and decided to get it calibrated recently (using the calibrite ColorChecker pro) which worked great. However it seems like Octane's live viewer isnt able to recognize this monitor correction profile I've created (is there a way to get it to recognize the calibration??). So in effect, the live viewer shows a much more saturated (typical wide gamut monitor over-saturation of sRGB content) version of the image than how the image actually looks once rendered and viewed in color managed Photoshop or After Effects. Seems like such a pity to not be able to get renders that look like what was created in the live viewer.. I guess I can turn off the ICC profile, ignore the calibration, and just work blissfully uncalibrated and have the live viewer and renders look the same to me at least on my monitor

> I'm super curious if anyone could enlighten me with a solution for dealing with the live viewer in c4d on a calibrated monitor?

> Are people working in c4d/octane, and then just accepting that renders will appear different once they are compositing in a color-managed application (in my case, the renders in AE look very desaturated, which is a bummer after I thought I had dialled in the render) Of course I can color correct, but still very annoying to be color correcting, not to improve the render, but to try to get back the look dialled-in in the live viewer already.

I'm by no means a color management expert(!)
Am I missing something?

All I could find about this subject is from this post from 2021 on OTOY's forum which has gone unanswered since 2021 (viewtopic.php?f=88&t=77457)

[SSmolak]

One thing that I can add here is that after calibration using Spyder and creating dedicated monitor color profile I must do "Assign Profile" and choose calibrated one in applications such Photoshop to have the same look which I had in renderer.

[boxfx]

I've been delving into this in recent months, the hope was that we could start outputting artwork with wider colour spaces so we could take advantage of the extra colours offered when we go to print via adobergb etc; also because some of the products we make, their main colours simply don't exist within the srgb gamut. The general conclusion we came to is that it just isn't worth the hassle of trying to get everyone working in a colour accurate pipeline because the disadvantages significantly outweighed the advantages.

All it takes is one windows update, driver update, 3d app update, render engine update, powercut resetting your monitor settings, someone pressing a wrong button, opening an older project without the right settings... for the entire thing to come crumbling down. And the worst thing is given the nature of it all, you might go days or weeks before you ever actually noticed something was even wrong.

In the end it was broadly decided that the simplest solution was to just stick with srgb and pick monitors which get this reasonably close to begin with, which isn't all that difficult. The final pre-press colour correction is left to someone on a mac where all this mess is relatively much more straight forward.

My general advice for anyone that wants to do this... is just don't. The potential gains just aren't worth it unless you have someone on hand that really knows what they're doing.

[Micahhesse]

Thank you to everyone who replied !!

The main issue I’m dealing with, is that ONLY the Octane live viewer does not take my monitor’s calibrated ICC profile into account, and instead shows a completely uncalibrated image. When I render the image, and check it in After effects, Photoshop, or any other color managed application, It looks less saturated since the calibration is taken into account.

heres what it looks like: https://imgur.com/h8C1CCS (top image is photoshop, bottom is oversaturated Liveviewer in c4d)
I’ve installed my ICC profile in windows color management, and as you can see in the screenshot, its also selected in c4d’s preferences.

Otherwise I accept that I am working with a prosumer monitor, and 100% accuracy is of course far from possible. I also accept that my content could be viewed on 1000 different monitors of varying quality. However, after calibrating several of my monitors, I was still very pleased with how similar the same image looked on all 3 monitors compared to before, and If I think I’m sending my client an image that has very saturated vibrant colors, and it looks desaturated on their macbooks, that is certainly a bit of a problem. And If I’m doing look dev in c4d + octane, it's really annoying to render the image out and find that it looks so different.

I wonder if this is a bug with the plugin?

I’m on C4D 2023.1.3 and octane’s latest stable build for c4d.

[jayroth2020]

Micah, the version of Octane that you should be using is 2022.1-R7

[aoktar]

It was unimplement feature, now added. I wouldn't assumed that's required

[Micahhesse]

Installed octane 2022.1-R7 but the issue persists for me, see screengrabs below:

Calibrated Monitor Profile is installed. PS and LV are very Different, LV is much more saturated.
https://imgur.com/a/akX29vs

Calibrated Monitor Profile IS NOT installed. PS and LV are identical, but images are oversaturated (uncalibrated):
https://imgur.com/a/QzUGqfn

[SSmolak]

Installed octane 2022.1-R7 but the issue persists for me, see screengrabs below:

Calibrated Monitor Profile is installed. PS and LV are very Different, LV is much more saturated.
https://imgur.com/a/akX29vs

To make them looks the same just Assign Profile and choose your calibrated monitor profile in PS. Octane doesn't read monitor profiles.

[Micahhesse]

To make them looks the same just Assign Profile and choose your calibrated monitor profile in PS. Octane doesn't read monitor profiles.

Monitor profile IS assigned in photoshop and windows. The fact that octane Live viewer in c4d does not appear to be able to to read the calibrated monitor profile is precisely my issue. for example, I'll be working on a project in c4d + octane, and think that I'm designing something with specific colors/saturation, but then when I export it and view it in photoshop or After effects I'm getting a vastly different image...

[aoktar]

Installed octane 2022.1-R7 but the issue persists for me, see screengrabs below:

Calibrated Monitor Profile is installed. PS and LV are very Different, LV is much more saturated.
https://imgur.com/a/akX29vs

Calibrated Monitor Profile IS NOT installed. PS and LV are identical, but images are oversaturated (uncalibrated):
https://imgur.com/a/QzUGqfn

How is the output from Picture Viewer? And where do you use icm file in C4D?