ACES Explained! How does it work in Octane?

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:39 Context
1:50 WTF is ACES?
3:34 How to think about ACES
4:54 Why an ACES workflow is useful
5:47 Octane vs ACES Explained
6:29 What is Octane Tone mapping?
7:10 What is ACES Tone Mapping?
8:03 Why does “The ACES Look” look good?
10:13 Where is the look coming from?
12:48 The Problem with ACES
14:02 Do I need to convert my textures? (IDT Transform)
15:02 When should you click the button?
16:46 If I’m a beginner, should I using ACES?
17:00 How do I get the ACES look on my renders?
17:57 Should you use ACES?
19:19 Final thoughts
Join me down the rabbit hole as I try to uncover what ACES is, what it does, and if should you be using it for you 3D scenes. As you can tell I had a whole lot of fun with this one, and hope it helps anyone along their 3D journey.
This is more of a knowledge dump video than a simple how to guide on setting up ACES, and is applicable to any 3D program that can utilise Octane, such as Blender and Unreal, or Cinema 4D.
These are all the collected thoughts from an insane group talented artist that I had the pleasure of being introduced to thanks to the guys at Render Token, along with some healthy doses of dodgy analogies to distill some of the basic concepts and misconceptions that come with ACES.
Granted I knew nothing about this topic going into it, it’s been a few weeks of hard researching and discussions of getting to the bottom of the ACES debate. It was extremely difficult to combine both a beginners perspective as well as include some detailed analysis from experts, so I hope it captures both sides and is useful to you, please let me know what you think!
Resources:
ACES Videos:
How to use ACES Tonemapping by Silverwing: • Silverwing Quick Tip: ...
ACES Theory by InLightVFX: • Add VFX into Cinematic...
ACES Articles
acescolorspace.com
www.premiumbeat.com/blog/aces...
www.toadstorm.com/blog/?p=694
www.elsksa.me/scientia/cgi-of...
References:
Octane Statue Model and Environment - CGSHORTCUTS
A massive thank you to Dino for featuring in this video, if you want more from him please watch my nearly hour long interview where we discuss his amazing approach to creating beautiful 3D work: • Interview with a Pro -...
Also a massive shout out to Padi, Giles, and everyone at Render Token for hooking me up with this insane knowledge.
Follow me if you want more outrageously specific Octane content.

[@NewPlastic]

Holy shit this is so well made! Great video dude

[@pro.tharan]

This means so much coming from you, thank so much dude! ♥ Can I get you on a "Interview with a Pro" series? Would love to pick your brain and have so many questions for you!

[@NewPlastic]

@@pro.tharan Hahha are you serious, I mean fuck yeah im down Hit me up on my email I think it's in my about channel and we can take it from there

[@llennoco]

Well produced video, my only point would be I wish you covered more of the shortfalls and criticisms of ACES. Off brand colours is actually only a symptom, of a wider problem with ACES ODT. e.g it's per channel transform, tendency to skew colours, lack of gamut mapping, very contrasty tone curve. Even within the VFX industry this transition has been plagued with confusion, misconceptions and output issues. The reason that button is there is simply because users kept asking for it having heard about this "new thing" being used in the VFX industry and believing it would bring their work a dose of production quality results. The devs implemented OCIO, however users were still struggling to set up ACES via OCIO so they added a checkbox. Particularly ironic that an encoding system designed for the interchange of hundreds of formats has been reduced to a single checkbox for a single transform. But to summarize, in the context most Octane users are using it, it's essentially a LUT with a lot of hype but yes it will look better just using a sRGB EOTF view transform for final image formation but it's certainly not without it's issues and there are more capable options out there.

[@pro.tharan]

Hi @llennoco22 thank you so much for your incredibly detailed reply, and for flagging all of the above. I agree the transition and adoption of ACES is a super confusing one, and hope this video did help remedy some of this, however your points are a lot more thorough and things I should have included in this video that I did not have time for. Thanks again and will bare this in mind as we progress with ACES, and should I do another video will aim to bring in some of these further shortfalls!.

[@sanderbos4243]

Damn, great production quality and really satisfying answers!

[@pro.tharan]

Thank you so much! Feel like I went a little overboard, but I’m so glad you enjoyed it!

[@dinomuhic]

Wonderful video Pro!

[@pro.tharan]

All thanks to you Dino for sharing your knowledge with us!

[@devenjameslangston]

great interview! very handy info to know. Thanks for doing this.

[@pro.tharan]

Glad you enjoyed the interview, and hope my explanations made sense 😄

[@Ave117]

Funny Side Fact: The Octane Manual actually suggests to not use the ACES-CG Color Space, instead it recommends to use the full fledged Spectrum of ACES2065-1 as most compositing Tools can handle it and it is not as clamped as ACES-CG. And also in my Experience with using ACES with Octane, I have to say that especially Refractions and Reflections seem to be way more Realistic.

[@Ave117]

Here is what it says in the Manual: "(...)ACES 2065-1 is the full range color space, appropriate for Octane as it is a spectral renderer, whereas ACEScg is intended for RGB render engines, and is a reduced color space. Either will work, and most compositing applications can handle the ACES 2065-1 spec."

[@jasonwilde5335]

This is a great video. A complicated subject very well explained. Well done. Do you use ACES in photoshop?

[@DomZeal]

This is the exact knowledge I'm looking for, thanks for making the video.

[@pro.tharan]

Glad it was helpful, it's an incredibly niche topic but I had fun doing a deep dive, and let me know what other area's I can help with! The Interview with a Pro series also touches on use cases with all of these artists with ACES, check out the Silverwing one and skip to the ACES part as he talks more in detail about some of the pro's and con's now that After Effects has been updated! Thank you so much again!

[@DomZeal]

@@pro.tharan I love Silverwing, definitely will take a look.

[@octomotion]

looking forward to your insights!!

[@pro.tharan]

Thank you, cant wait to hear your thoughts during and afterwards! 😄

[@studiohoops]

Great video!

[@pro.tharan]

Thanks you! Hope you found it useful!

[@Mac_Daffy]

Can‘t wait! 🔥

[@pro.tharan]

Wouldn't have been possible without your help, thank you so much again!

[@Snahbah]

Okay. How do I render the clamped 8 bit PNG and the unclamped 32 exr simultaneously?

[@NathanGW]

I use Corona render for Archviz and in one of the last versions they released a similar checkbox called "ACES OT" I search to see if it was good to use, I could be wrong, correct me if it is please, but from what I understood this ACES checkbox of the appearance of an image treated with ACES and it is interesting to use to have a good result, it takes a lot of effort for someone who wants a quick result with a good appearance, but not being a form of linear post production... I did tests and for me it works use, because I already use only LUT without post production programs (like PS for example), I have a workflow too intense to afford to do a custom post production for each generated image... I believe that for my case this checkbox is too much convenient, but of course, I leave it open for comments and suggestions for cases like this, what better workflow to get realistic and fast results.

[@Mac_Daffy]

Colors in the digital world are represented by numbers. The appearance of colors is determined by the math which scientists and developers (Octane, ACES working group, etc.) use to translate these values e.g. from a large color space to a smaller one that your display is actually able to produce. Since human vision is non-linear and subjective, there is no single "correct" way to do this. The same applies to human hearing and it is comparable to lossy audio compression, where mathematical algorithms (e.g. MP3) are used to reduce the size of a file while maintaining the perceived quality of the sound, a field known as psychoacoustics. In the visual realm, this could be referred to as color (perception) science and many prefer the look the algorithms used in ACES produce. Furthermore, ACES is a standard which software developers now can follow. This will allow for better interchange of images between tools without loosing their look when moving from one stage of your workflow to the next (e.g. from rendering to compositing).

[@MetalGearMk3]

ACES? Use AgX

[@Gromic2k]

Well i tried it and it looked terrible. Is there a workflow or whatever to do it right?

[@dinomuhic]

@@Gromic2k no it just looks terrible, I tried all the included transforms and wasn't satisfied with any of them sadly.