From what I understood :
- No, a s-curve should not make things “brighter”. It is used to map luminance values onto display (from scene-referred to display-referred). It generally adds contrast with a nice roll-off in the highlights. This is very well explained in Cinematic Color.
- You’re absolutely right. It is not recommended at all to load texures in Output - sRGB. It has been discussed many times on ACESCentral. However in my boat example, I am loading a color key to approximately pick some ACEScg values and then use them in Guerilla. Since I am hand-picking them, I can check they are within a reasonable PBR range.
- I think this example was to show a workflow that would hopefully still be PBR-friendly and Art Director friendly. Maybe it is a flawed process and an unsuccessful experiment, but it kinda worked for me and my Playmobil boat.
Hope it helps,
Chris