How to Work in HDR Everywhere (Blender, After Effects, Resolve) - Video Tech Explained

In this video, I'll be going over my workflow for HDR color management across Davinci Resolve, Adobe After Effects, and Blender.
If you're confused, or you need a refresher, I'd recommend watching these videos first:
What is Color Management? • What is Color Manageme...
What is HDR Video? • What is HDR Video? (HD...
True HDR Monitoring on a Budget • True HDR Monitoring on...
Plug-ins & libraries used in this video:
Blender ACES color management library drive.google.com/file/d/1YX-4...
OpenColorIO for After Effects fnordware.blogspot.com/2012/05...
== Navigation ==
00:00 Introduction
01:15 Defining the Problem
03:42 Scene-Referred Formats
07:22 The ACES Workflow
08:47 Tutorial: Exporting From Resolve
11:20 Tutorial: Creating an Asset in Blender
15:34 Tutorial: Compositing in After Effects
20:51 Tutorial: Importing Into Resolve
22:01 Closing
== Links ==
Join the official VTE Discord server: / discord
Support me: / videotechexplained
My portfolio: camoncrocker.com

[@Pewi73]

Fantastically useful tutorial. Thank you very much.

[@TRPproproductions]

Amazing video!! Thank you so much for this! Good luck on your channel Camon!

[@zeeyannosse]

awesomeness !! thank you ! Great enthusiastic and super precise explanation !!! bravo !

[@outcast6187]

11:22 Thanks for this, this is the ONLY video I have found that actually helped make me get HDR video editing work in Blender.

[@flexydex8754]

😂

[@javajack-1]

Excellent video. Thanks for the information.

[@SeeMeRolling]

Love ur videos great work!

[@wakkowarner8810]

I love your channel. I can’t wait to make my first HDR film.

[@flexydex8754]

😂

[@Meteotrance]

We can import aces 2065 natively in Blender it work also with filmic, but it's tricky to export open exr linear without a linear aces in Filmic, Natron and krita can also manage aces too with the right open color io. I recomend using DWAA for the compression in open exr it's smaller than a PNG even in 32 bit floating point.

[@jeffreyspinner5437]

I thought all I had to do to work in Davinci Resolve with Filmic log or what I use now is AgX, was the utility LUT that is gamma 2.2? No? ACES is too heavy, it's like over a gb of something in the implementation for blender. It's not like I'm working with a production company and AgX looks REALLY good, better than Filmic Log. The guy that made the first Filmic choice made the AgX I'm using. I slap on the LUT and wham, almost perfectly color corrected out of the box. Then I can color grade if I want.

[@Meteotrance]

​@@jeffreyspinner5437 you can compresse open EXR using dreamworks codec DWAA or DWAb and using aces override filmic or any other linear color space, you just have to work with the 16 bit float or 32 bit and choose aces2065 or ACES CG both work. ACES CG was made for texturing and compositing, but since render can manage true raytracing and global illumination from true HDRI it's better to export ACES 2065 as final render output.

[@Meteotrance]

In 16 bit exr with dwaa it's perfectly managable even in UHD or 4K but you need to convert in a lossless video format or have a caching, editing pure blender 3D scene inside blender without render is possible and preview in eevee, you render all the blend file in one pass, as long as you don't use substance painter or using external footage ACES is not require but it's better to understand if you need to make a master imf file for netflix or a dolby vision or DCP release, ACES was made for that and broadcast ready, to keep color consistency accross software and camera.

[@jeffreyspinner5437]

@@Meteotrance So in the final analysis, I should just install ACES and use ACES CG for Blender (I have ACES colormanagement already, it's huge) instead of the AgX I'm using and after importing into Resolve using the utility LUT gamma 2.2... then don't I have to change the color management from Davinci Wide Gamut to some version of ACES or have my last color node tree node the CST for ACES? Given Blender is a "perfect" camera, what choice do I even use in that case? I'm only going from Blender renders to Resolve given I'm just producing Machinima. Thank you for your time and any direction you can give me on this issue... Overall with my render tests, AgX exported to Resolve under the utility LUT wasn't bad imo.... e.g., kzbin.info/www/bejne/nIbXoaWJaL6XeZI or kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6qlqqaPg76sfK8 The were render tests so forgive the rushed appearance.

[@Meteotrance]

@@jeffreyspinner5437 technicly for ACES ready you have both color management method, you can stay fully filmic rgb and use the already avaible ACES overide for CG or 2065 export work also if you import ACES CG open exr texture you just have to tell in the node manager that you using aces texture for the color, the roughness gloss and normal map, must be setup in Raw mod instead of non color, if you stay rgb and regular png setup in rgb for color map and non color for other, now for the export of the render use ACES 2065 or ACES CG as an overide of filmic it should work and convert everything, you can also install aces as your main color management, but you need to work only with it, ACES overide is already install and you can probably using it with your blender better color stuff, but i not recomend it, for davinci stay in aces CCT color space you can also work with the davinci wide gamut but you must specified that your open EXR are ACES. In the true ACES CCT mode it's already setup, except if you using aces CG as you render output you must specified in that case, aces CG should only be use for texturing and compositing purpose.

[@olivier_cantin]

Great video! If I want to simply use Slog3 footage and export in HDR, I simply use ACES with the proper colour input and export in HDR? What are the settings you use in the export tab to export in HDR? Thank you a lot 🙏

[@spotsnap]

Thanks!

[@curtdp]

Not bad explanation. I want to add that v-log and slog3 actually both are scene referred formats (as aces and davinci wide gamut) and rec709 rec2020 dci-p3 are display referred to be more accurate. Scene referred is what input device (real or virtual camera) sees, display reffered is what display or projector can show. To be scene reffered format is not necessarily to be linear. Actually ACES have non linear color space too which is ACEScct.

[@hardeeentertainment-alsplace]

Another smart video.

[@flexydex8754]

idiotic*

[@nikilragav]

Thanks for this detailed analysis and tutorial. Why did you need After Effects at all for this particular usecase / workflow? It seems like you could have either A) composited the output in Blender itself, or B) exported the image sequence of just the head from Blender, dragged it onto the resolve timeline, and because blender already had the camera tracking data, it should align perfectly already, right? compositing done in Resolve. Also, what was the reason for using the ACEScg AP1 gamut? If a designer chose a color that was outside what humans could perceive, wouldn't it just clip to the closest color that we can perceive? Note that AP1 sticks outside of the visible region a little bit too. Also, relatedly, if we're using 32-bit floating point numbers anyway, why don't we just use CIE coordinates directly? Why do we need a triangular color gamut at all? Thanks!

[@VideoTechExplained]

The reason why I used after effects was simple: it was what I knew how to use, and I hadn't bothered to learn an alternative yet :) Since this video was published, I've mostly switched to Fusion.

[@techdata_channel]

Which HDR monitor ca you recommend to edit HDR (HLG) video ? typical contrast ratio is 1000, imho it should be 3000+, also as bt2020 coverage is up to 70%, imho not enough for color grading..

[@akyhne]

There are only few monitors on the market, that supports 10-bit HDR and at least 1000 nits. It's the more expensive Asus ProArt monitors. There are like 3 or 4 of them. They cost between $1500 & $4500. Then there are a few monotors, that are beyond these. An Asus and an Eizo. They go up to around 2000 nits. But they are like $20-40.000. A 1000 nits display is way more important, that the contrast ratio. If you have two displays that are both 1000 nits displays, but one "only" goes down to one nits, and the other to 0,33, you have a contrast ratio of 1:1000 on the first, and 1:3000 on the second. But you'll barely be able to tell the difference, especially if you're not colorgrading in a dark room. These are the standards for Netflix HDR workflow, but take them with a grain of salt. They can only be achieved on the + $20K monitors: "HDR (Dolby Vision) Reference Monitor (Minimum Requirements): Color Gamut: P3 White Point: D65 EOTF: SMPTE 2084 (PQ) Black Level: 0.005 Nits Peak Luminance: 1000 Nits Measured Contrast Ratio: 200,000:1 "

[@mariotriforce]

You should probably learn fusion, nodes are better for actual compositing+fusion is allready in linear 😉

[@letromortel]

Fusion node are all designed to work with linear light. In resolve Only RCM and ACES make Clips linearized in Fusion

[@coin777]

why didnt you add the blender image in resolve but you used AAE?

[@dongxinjiang1770]

14:16 the color space from blender was 2065-1, but why 19:38 you said it's ACES-scg?

[@letromortel]

Watch again : Blender's input ColorSpace is 2065-1 but blender's working/output ColorSpace is ACEScg

[@dpptd30]

Mac have seamless color managements, great video editing performance, and great support for Dolby Vision, but horrible GPU performance, especially for rendering in blender; PC have great GPU performance, and customizability, game development capability, but horrible color managements, and HDR support. I guess we just can't have nice things.

[@YungSuz]

hey your video was very useful! but for me the most annoying thing is that you have to change all textures all the time because most of them are sRGB if you feel the same way this is my solution: //just type in the python editor under script import bpy for image in bpy.data.images: image.colorspace_settings.name = 'Utility - sRGB - Texture'