Help requested with color management

[timAugustine]

Hi all,

I notice that the shadows in my scene are very dark. Despite cranking up the light a lot. I don't know if what I'm facing is a lighting issue or a colour management settings issue. I'm including a render of the dark shadows and also screenshots of other settings. Please do let me know if you need anything further!

I got the open color IO from here: https://github.com/imageworks/OpenColorIO-Configs

Thank you in advance for any feedback/answers!

Regards,
Tim

[elsksa]

Hi Tim,

Everything looks correct. See this, this, this and that and I would suspect a hardware matter (your display panel tech/calibration/Windows OS color management setup).

PS: in some cases, the "Tone Mapping" section (as in your screengrab) becomes irrelevant (bypasses), particularly when using OCIO. More information on the aforementioned links.

[timAugustine]

Thank you! I really like your website. I've been reading every page I can find on it. I should really give AgX a try. I've come across it before and I'm a lot more interested

As for my renders, I also tried other options in OCIO View and they seem to be working better. I'll either go with one of that or try AgX before I move to the next scene.

Thanks again for the website. Very very informative!

[dmerziii]

Make sure in your Octane Render settings (in the Properties panel) go to Color Management near the bottom and set the correct info there.

Here's the settings I use. (see screenshot) and if you're using 2022 - and you want to use ACES, you don't need to bother with the OCIO box, you can just use the checkbox. (see screenshot).
I get a match in my Blender viewport render view & my render outputs when I set the correct ACES transforms in my post-editor.

[timAugustine]

Hi dmerziii, thank you for your response. Call me fickle but I've already switched to AgX The dark patches on my renders don't look so dark any longer. I still don't know if the settings I've chosen for Octane Color Management on the Addons window is correct. I've included screenshots for all over here.

agx_colour_management_add_on_setting

agx_camera_imager_settings

agx_colour_management_settings

I've noted that just selecting the ACES tone mapping check box option is enough. Thank you for pointing this out!

[elsksa]

Hi dmerziii, thank you for your response. Call me fickle but I've already switched to AgX The dark patches on my renders don't look so dark any longer. I still don't know if the settings I've chosen for Octane Color Management on the Addons window is correct. I've included screenshots for all over here.

Just check all the links I've shared. Everything is in them, including a section about the ACES checkbox
If it still doesn't look "right", I would strongly suspect something fishy at hardware/OS level (your display or Windows OS/GPU "color settings")

I've noted that just selecting the ACES tone mapping check box option is enough. Thank you for pointing this out!

Unless someone has to follow an ACES pipeline, typically in a studio environment, the ACES checkbox does suffice. However, it is based on ACES 1.2 and even 1.3 has flaws. AgX is nothing perfect but the closest to, despite it's core design approach, I can't recommend it enough. It's a no-brainer and straight forward.

[Andreas_Resch]

Hello.

I'm trying to set up the ACES workflow and would like to know if I've done it right. Maybe somebody could take a look at those settings and let me know, if I've considered everything and the settings are OK. I appreciate it. Here are the screengrabs of all the involved windows.
Somehow the ACES tone mapping setting do not change anything about the viewport display. Not sure if it works or if I have forgotten to activate some settings.

[elsksa]

Hi Andreas,

As I've mentioned previously, is the actual OCIO-driven ACES workflow necessary or could the ACES checkbox suffice? It will save a lot of hassle but then, AgX is recommended as yielding superior results.

See this, this, this and that it's all explained and detailed.

Blender's Color Management tab has to be set to raw, as indicated in the Octane Blender Color Management page. I'm spoiling this one but still strongly suggest to consult the links.

[Andreas_Resch]

Thanks a lot for the links. Changing the settings in Color Management to "sRGB" and "Raw" looks the same as the settings that I used before. But if that's the proper way to interpret those settings, I might as well use those. I've tried AgX before with the Cycles implementation. There were some issues with color shifting, but I might give it a try again with Octane. For now I'll stick to ACES. Just to keep things simple while I try Octane a bit more.

[elsksa]

Changing the settings in Color Management to "sRGB" and "Raw" looks the same as the settings that I used before.But if that's the proper way to interpret those settings, I might as well use those.

I believe this is relevant when rendering the "final" (sent to Blender's frame buffer), than during in-viewport "IPR" rendering.

I've tried AgX before with the Cycles implementation. There were some issues with color shifting, but I might give it a try again with Octane. For now I'll stick to ACES. Just to keep things simple while I try Octane a bit more.

No such issue. This was likely a user-error as that aspect is notoriously known to be present when using ACES, which AgX prevents from happening. AgX is the in fact the simplest of the two.