I typicaly work Resolve set to ACEScct
i have an animated feature on my doorstep and cannot get a reasonable match between the supplied EXR’s and the refrence Qt’s used in editing
i can get a match by setting Resolve to YRGB, and adding their linear-709 lut in the media pool
selecting ACES and any IDT going to a 709 ODT resualts in a significantly diffrent EXR image
i can match the ref Qt’s with a 709 IDT
i’ve been primairly using ACES since v0.9 in Nucoda, then Resolve, i’m not new at this… this would be feature number 67 graded in ACES
thoughts welcome, i’m assumeing it’s between the chair and the kb
what are the EXR’s? don’t have insight into the files, they do not have any info in the header
how were the ref’s created? i should be able to speak to the show’s TD tonight, find out how the refrence Qt’s were created
lin to display? two paths, one that works well,
set Resolve to YRGB, use linear-to-709 in the media page, EXR matches the refrence
-vs-
one that does not work well, EXR’s IDT to ACEScg / AP0 / None / anything else, and refrence to 709, EXR’s do not match refrence, or even close, or even in the same ballpark… ERX’s show vastly more saturation and contrast
refrence does match between ACES 709 and YRGB, the odd person out is ACES + EXR’s
i will ask for a test frame that can be shared
I think you just need to talk to the show’s TD and figure out the pipeline they actually used.
if just using linear-to-709 gets a match to the renders, then that’s definitely not ACES.
It sounds like they either 1) didn’t use ACES on the project at all, but delivered as EXRs because that’s what they were told to do, or less likely, 2) they didn’t know how to setup an ACES workflow and so didn’t give you EXRs that contain actual ACES data.
If the EXRs aren’t representative of ACES data, then you should not expect ACEScct and ACES 709 Output Transform to produce the reference renders.
late reply, talking to TD was not all that useful… but my takeaway is door #1, they have rendered into an EXR container to meet delivery spec’s
still no idea what output transform been used when frames are rendered tho
I have not given up on getting a close enough match, need to deliver home HDR, SDR theatrical as well as 709, ACES is my prefered workflow for that
It sounds as if rather than ACES they used a legacy workflow with a simple Rec.709 1D LUT as a display transform.
The major problem with this is that no data above 1.0 in the EXRs would have been visible to the animators, as they had no tone mapping. It is therefore likely that they would have reduced the lighting levels to non physically plausible values, in order to keep most of the rendered image data below 1.0. This may limit your ability to create an HDR deliverable, and force you to fake it in the grade.