ACES and Fusion - Linear Workflow in DaVinci Resolve

[@johannes3530]

This is a great video!! Thanks for it! The only downside.... its a little bit outdated and i would LOVE having your explanation on this topic where we are standing today. Like fusion studio standalone now has the Aces Transform node! The settings in Davinci Resolve have changed too and there are more viable options now.

[@VFXstudy]

Yes, indeed, an update is on my list though not sure when I get to it. We also have the Color Space CST nodes in the Fusion tab now, so things get a bit easier. Still not working in the View LUT though...

[@Rav3nHUN]

​@@VFXstudy 1. Although there is now an "ACES Transform" LUT in Davinci 19 it is not without bugs: I still have to force the "ManagedColorSpace" LUT to do nothing by setting the output color space and gamma to the same value as the input. 2. What you didn't mentioned in the vid is that content created directly in Fusion need to be transformed to ACEScg (by using an ACESTransform (sRGB --> No Output) node). Otherwise for example a full white text will appear as 0.81197 gray, because RGB 1,1,1 values are interpreted as ACES (AP1) and will be transformed ACEScg --> ACES - sRGB. Huge thanks for this video! I couldn't have figured out all the above without it! Hack this 4yrs old vid is almost the only relevant info that can be found on the web regarding ACES and Fusion (Davinci)

[@olegzvyagintsev6966]

I spent a hilarious amount of time trying to do it logically, like it is in nuke and houdini. My sanity was under question. Thank you for bringing up all of these bugs under surface, I know I'm not alone with this frustration.

[@sarukravitz4981]

Bernd, I want to thank you for taking my suggestion for doing a tutorial (3 as it turned out!) on "Linear Workflow including Viewer LUTs" from a few months back. Sure, in theory it's straightforward in the manual but as you have shown there are a lot of potential pitfalls (including bugs). This was stellar. The depth of your knowledge and the way you explain it make you a rare beast indeed. I've decided to purchase your compositing course and even though I think I already know a fair bit, I am sure I will gain valuable insights. Thanks again.

[@VFXstudy]

Thanks a lot 😀

[@YeetusMcfeetus]

my brain crumbles with how much you know!

[@YeetusMcfeetus]

@Neil Keagan im not talking about a stupid movie watching website, i am talking about video editing lol

[@vladyslavlavrenov9167]

@@YeetusMcfeetus Haha, you got baited by bots

[@YeetusMcfeetus]

@@vladyslavlavrenov9167 i guess

[@JalilTheBourne]

The level is up This become my favourite channel on KZbin Thank you so much for your amazing tutorials

[@Electricvfx]

Thank you this helped me a lot, can't say I understand everything but now my renders from 3d look like they should in fusion.

[@dorincroitoru5913]

Much needed nfo to clear up these issues. Thank you - ps i've been using OCIO for some time now for the display viewer in fusion, they also apply when you do lookdev in 3d softwares - This actually ensures you transfer the look from the lookdev consistently to compland. The most anoying issue with resolve was having a different apperance in the edit timeline vs fusion page. I found i got over this by turning the edit timeline to Linear space

[@VFXstudy]

Interesting approach. So edit timeline linear and then the corresponding view luts to see it again. But then your color page tools would also be working on the linear timeline, which I think could be a bit awkward? How do you deal with that? Do you switch before grade or don't need the color page for your work? For some pure VFX workflows I suppose this could work...

[@dorincroitoru5913]

@@VFXstudy yes, working primarily on full cg animations with exr files for this has been ok. Color page still works fine this way as far as i have noticed. U can still use the aces plugin to switch from aces cg to rec709 for the clip either as a last node in the color page, or you could apply it as an effect in the edit page and then color adjustments get applied over it

[@VFXstudy]

@@dorincroitoru5913 yeah correct, interesting approach. So you don't use the ACES output while in edit and keep that for Fusion or the end... can see this as an option for full course work. For people starting from live action footage maybe less intuitive but I suppose if you understand every component of the workflow then there are different ways to tweak it to your needs

[@dorincroitoru5913]

@@VFXstudy i guess there are many ways to get to a working result. I found this works for me. I took the principles of basic comp 101 - work in linear workspace for everything. If i was in nuke and i had live action plate i would still use a color transform to work on it in linear space, this way the rule is, everything you import must be transformed to linear, then do your work in that space, then color transform to rec709 for export. Main reason i did this approach in resolve was to get the same look for linear exr renders from fusion to my edit page, i didnt find any other way

[@duncanbuckley7020]

@@dorincroitoru5913 how do you change the edit timeline in resolve to linear?

[@blendertutorialdotnet]

at 6:00 you set ACES CG as an Input Transform and REC709 to an outout, but the original source footage is an Alexa log file. Then why is this the case? What's happening? The ACES timeline converts the Arri footage to ACES CG BEFORE it enters into Fusion? So the data which leaves the FIRST MediaIn node is not Arri log but ACES CG? I'm confused, please help me to understand.

[@VFXstudy]

No need for confusion - you got it right! Resolve color management automatically takes the Arri footage into the ACES timeline space, which can be ACEScc or ACEScct. That's the ACES AP1 gamut together with a LOG gamma curve. When you go to Fusion, Resolve Color Management removes the gamma curve. ACEScg is the ACES variant with ACES AP1 gamut and linear gamma. So that's where you are by default in Fusion when Resolve Color Management is set to ACES.

[@blendertutorialdotnet]

@@VFXstudy Thank You!!

[@TheGKFront]

So happy to see new videos from you!! I love your tutorials! :)

[@rickvdvulkaan]

you have no idea how you just helped me out here.. I had the same idea about the aces transform node at the end of the tree but you would still keep the issue when viewing nodes individually in between. This OCIO method is an actual solution for now. Thanks a bunch, what kind of beer do you like and where can i send it to?

[@danquixote6072]

Very useful. I recently created a 3D text design following the manual - it looked great but in the edit page it looked terrible. I found a solution in the color page using the color space transform node - and changing the input color Space to ACES and the output color space to Rec 709 or sRGB. Really, I have no idea what I’m doing but it seemed to work. I wish I had seen this video beforehand.

[@7steelrainbow]

A life saver, indeed. Thank you!

[@TheCreativeModellerHO]

Great video, thanks!

[@derekjcooper]

Try this - create an all-white background in Fusion. How do you get it back in the timeline and still be pure white? All of my attempts result in something off-white (grey).

[@leestripp7387]

Have you tried setting the OCIO environment variable, not sure that works inside Resolve/Fusion page, but its how to set it as default for Fusion Studio. This also works for Houdini, Nuke family apss etc...

[@VFXstudy]

Right, good point that should take care of the file path. Have done it in Fusion Studio but suppose it should be possible in Resolve as well

[@CmpcuracaoDotCom]

Hello, I love your videos, so educational and very important stuff many overlook. Question: for Raw Delta keying, should the aces transform node be applied at the beginning? I am stuck on the thought that keying a green screen Log (raw) looking image will be harder for Fusion than a correct color managed image?

[@VFXstudy]

Generally, you should work in linear space in Fusion. If you have Resolve Color Management enabled, then that would happen automatically, if not you can do it manually ACES transform / Color transform nodes can be used for that.

[@johanvanhuyssteen9217]

Thanks for sharing!

[@VFXstudy]

Welcome!

[@operoptima]

VFX, guys, I know there is a way to use absolute pixel references in fusion. Does anybody know how to fo it?

[@TheGKFront]

Do you have any insider details about what we are going to see from Resolve 17 in a hew hours? :) It will be 4AM in Brisbane :O

[@VFXstudy]

No insider details unfortunately, but will be watching as well..

[@derekjcooper]

Awesome!

[@TehSpeedRunner]

You are my hero!

[@darviniusb]

The color management is a catastrophe in dafusion. I am working currently on a project in resolve and fusion and i edit and define the shots in resolve, in resolve color space normally no change, while in fusion i put an IDT after media in (sometimes i prefer using a fusion loader) then an ODT and i do all the work betwen them. No view luts, i always watch the odt ACES to srgb for output. View lut is unusable and causes to many problems. And by keeping resolve in his colorspace i do not risc to double gamma the footage. Anyway, dafusion is long way from a production ready compositor. Except linux on windows is crashing like crazy with bigger projects. On linux rock solid everything but slow compared to fusion studio.

[@VFXstudy]

Yes, Fusion Studio is faster and more stable. Regarding your setup, well If you do it manually as you describe with IDT / ODT then also a manual view LUT via OCIO shouldn't be an issue. The managed view LUT is quite annoying, I agree and hope they do some upgrades there. Interesting your observation that Linux is running more stable for you than Windows. Not sure if it's a general observation, but I used it in the past and thought of setting up a parallel install again...

[@elansmith9291]

I love you

[@DucaSimonLuchini]

Hi Bernd; I don't understand WHY you don't make any tutorial about Fusion STUDIO Standalone. Many users who would like to learn Fusion Studio are CG artists or Compers who are from other compositing software and would not want to go through Davinci to access Fusion. In fact, the problem is that in Fusion Studio things sometimes work differently ..., precisely the Linear workflow is different because in Fusion Studio you have to "linearize" each input ... A tutorial on this issue would be great, and great would be tutorials done ONLY for Fusion Studio on all other pure compositing topics too ...

[@VFXstudy]

Watch the first tutorial in this series about why we need a linear workflow. There I show the manual transforms without Resolve Color Management. That's exactly what you do in Fusion Studio. Except for the tutorials where I show specific Resolve integration features, ALL my tutorials work with Fusion Studio and im my compositing course I provide both Fusion comp files and Resolve projects to follow along. Except for the integration there isn't really any difference for the tutorials...

[@DucaSimonLuchini]

@@VFXstudy my question was not "Why we need a linear workflow".... My question was how to Linearize inputs using EXCLUSIVELY Fusion Studio. On my PC I have only Fusion Studio installed. There is no Davinci and I don't want to use it for compositing (at least for now) by switching from Davinci to Fusion. Again, I have ONLY Fusion Studio. How do I linearize the inputs (Footage, Photos, Multipass CGI ...): did you make a tutorial about this? Because the tutorials I've seen are for Davinci / Fusion ONLY. By the way: Don't forget that Image Sequences (DPX, TIFF, Targa. PNG ...) are used in all compositing workflows of a certain level and this does NOT happen in the Davinci / Fusion workflow!

[@VFXstudy]

@@DucaSimonLuchini once again the same tools for manual linearization in Resolve are used in Fusion Studio. That's why I pointed you to the tutorial. You have the gamut node, the cineon log tool and the OCIO tools. And yes image sequences like exr png etc. are all supported in Resolve as well. And no, I'm not telling you to install Resolve, I'm just saying the tools and workflow are the same if Resolve color management is not active and you replace mediain/out with loader and saver nodes.

[@DucaSimonLuchini]

@@VFXstudy I think a specific tutorial about it would be great. Because again, many Compers come from Nuke, AE, Natron, and so on, and they are not interested at all in Davinci. Referring all the time in what happens in Davinci with CMS can be very confusing... For this reasons, I just asked for a specific dedicated tut ONLY for Fusion. I hope it won't too hard to do. After this step, aka "How to linearize inputs in Fusion Studio" (Including Image Sequences ...), all your tuts about Davinci/Fusion will be more accessible because the operations are the same, as you said.