I don’t know if this has been mentioned here before but if not here it goes:
There is now a really easy way to emulate some ACES workflows using 3D LUTs exported from DaVinci Resolve.
As of the latest versions of Resolve (15.2.2 I think but could be earlier), DaVinci’s own ACES Transform OFX Plugins as well as their Colour Space Transform Plugins can now be exported into 3D LUTs (previously they couldn’t).
If you set your Colour Management to DaVinci YRGB and on any given clip create two serial nodes with the new ACES Transform OFX plugin on each you can emulate most ACES IDT+RRT+ODT combinations and then export a 3D LUT out of them using the “Generate 3D LUT (CUBE)” command.
Basically the first node works to select the IDT and the ACES working Space and the second node works for coming from the ACES working space to the selected ODT.
If you wanted to create an ACES emulation LUT for the Alexa IDT using ACES Rec709 ODT to monitor on set for example you could easily:
Set an ACES Transform OFX plugin on the first serial node, set the ACES version to say 1.1, then on Input Transform select Alexa, on Output Transform Select say ACEScct. On the second serial node you would then chose ACEScct as the Input Transform and the “Rec709 as the output transform.
All that is left to do is right click on the clip thumbnail and select “Generate 3D LUT (CUBE)” and voila, you have a 3D LUT that combines the IDT, RRT and ODT.
As far as I know, this method will only export LUTs in Extended Range levels (Full Range). There may be a workaround to export Legal Range level LUTs in Resolve but I’m not aware of it. You could always use a tool like Lattice if you need to convert from extended to Legal range but otherwise this method seems to work wonders and it’s accessible to anyone with a copy of Resolve Studio.
Just as a side note, you can obviously put however many nodes with primary corrections between the two ACES transform nodes to export a LUT with a baked in look that goes farther than the ACES IDT+RRT+ODT transforms.