I’m working on a 3d stylized animation project. I got srgb textures as pngs and some of them have 1/1/1 whites. When I use the import transform utility-srgb-texture in arnold for houdini or even nuke the whites are 1/1/1, but look grey viewing them through the ACES 1.0 -SDR Video (sRGB-Display) ODT. Using Un-tone-mapped (sRGB-Display) they look identical to the pngs. Should I now apply an inverted ODT on these textures in nuke by using the OCIODisplay node to get back these whites giving me 16/16/16 or should I increase the lighting in the scene or make the textures brighter in houdini by just eyeballing. Or is it correct I never see pure white 16/16/16 purely from textures? Only by increasing the light exposure? Or should I treat my textures like logos that have to show up correctly even when viewed through the ODT? Whats the correct way?
Either you need to closely hit the concept art (almost like pixel matching) and then maybe you can use the display encoding view (un-tone-mapped). Almost like a 2d project with no Global Illumination (GI) where everything is painted (almost with emissive materials).
Either you have bit of room at shot lighting/rendering stage with the GI and some Comp work. I have heard of NPR projects using color management but there was definitely room for shot improvements/proposals, rather than matching perfectly a 2d reference.
This is why my first answer was “it depends on the project” like time/budget… Thanks !
Bear in mind that while it’s a valid creative choice, replicating textures with (1, 1, 1) whites in the final rendered image means you have nowhere brighter to go for specular highlights. That’s the reason systems like ACES render diffuse white at a lower level, to allow room above that for highlight roll-off.
