Hi guys currently im working on my projects using aces pipeline (node based Color Management)
Like : Input Camera - Working Aces CCt - Output - Rec709 (Timeline Color Space Acescct) - This is my working pipeline
My question is on VFX deliveries. How i deliver to VFX is Input Camera - Working Acescct - Output Acesap1 /Linear. This is how i deliver the shots to vfx Team.
Now the thing is if want to deliver arrilogc4 footage to vfx the working color space is very lower than ArrilogC4.
So can i change the working color space to DWG for CG timeline alone for better headroom
What do you mean with working color space is lower?
I think for an ACES workflow it would be best to send AP0/Linear EXR files as that is considered the interchange format. If the VFX department rather works with the camera gamut as source I would do camera primaries and linear gamma. If they don’t want EXR then I would say send camera native log files. You’ll want to make sure that they are 12bit in case of LogC4.
I would not change your working space. There is no reason to do so for this purpose.
Thanks for the reply Klaasen. Okay i can get your your point. The thing is acescct is lower than arrilogc4 and AcesAp01. My point is, Is that okay to send the larger space (Logc4) to lower space (acescct) then again send it to larger space (acesap0) there might be a loss would happen right? Thats why i asked can i use dwg as working color space? Since its a very larger space than C4
There is no loss of image information if the format you store to is EXR. In 32bit floating point values outside the converted gamut would become negative values, not clipped values. This is not the case with storing to integer based formats like ProRes or DPX. In those cases you really want to match the original camera space to prevent such potential issues.
If you aren’t bound to specifically deliver ACES 2065-1 (AP0/Lin) files I would probably recommend making linear camera native files as EXRs. If it’s from the Alexa 35 that would be AWG4/Linear.
Adding DWG in the mix only makes the pipeline more confusing since it’s ACES based.
Regardless of which path you choose, clear communication is always key so the VFX department knows what the space is and how to process them. Next to that, a quick round-trip as soon as possible to verify the pipeline always helps.
One last caveat I’d like to mention is be aware when using CSTs instead of ACESTransform nodes to convert scene referred data to other scene referred spaces. Tone mapping is enabled by default but should always be disabled unless you’re going from scene to display or vice versa.
