How to Use ACES in After Effects - Full Overview (2023)

foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] meet my little friend Forte I created Forte to test out the new Aces workflow in After Effects it's a great update so let's see how it all works if you'd like to follow along you can get the after effects file for this shot at the link in the description so I created forte in blender using this cool mechanical creature kit made by poly fuel the kit comes with all the parts you need to make some creatures or machines there's a free version of the kit you can try out and I have an affiliate Link in the description for this shot I created a render layer of the piano with Forte shadows and then another layer of forte himself here in After Effects I'm in version 23.2 and I've imported my footage and this exr sequence of my CG render then we can go to file project settings let's navigate over to the color tab for the color engine we'll select Ocio and we can now finally select Aces next we need to set our working color space for VFX this is usually going to be Asus CG this working color space is where all the compositing effects are applied and after effects calculates the resulting image by using Asus CG we'll be using a linear compositing workflow this just means that after effects is using the mathematics of how light works in the real world giving us realistic results so back in After Effects we'll keep this working color space set to Asus CG then we also have this display color space setting which I will keep at Aces srgb I'm going to explain this a little later okay next we have our footage in CG render and we want to apply an Aces input transform to each of them which will convert them into the working color space Asus CG in After Effects to apply an input transform I'll right-click my CG render go to interpret footage Main and click on the color tab here we see this media color space and this is the same thing as the Asus input transform for my CG render here I want to select Asus CG since this is the color space it was rendered in for my footage I will go in and set a different input transform created for my Panasonic gh5 and the v-log color profile now say I have an image like this which I want to preserve the look of you can see in After Effects it looks a bit off initially so what you have to do is go into the color settings because this image also needs an input transform assigned and for an image like this we want to set the input transform to Output srgb or output Rec 709 you can try both to see what works best I know this is a little bit confusing why we're setting an input to something named output the explanation is a little bit outside of what we'll cover in this video but if you want to read more about it I'll put some links in the description and if we hit OK our image is now appearing correctly now if I have a bunch of video files setting the input transform for all of these would be a very long process but what I can do is set just one file to the correct input transform [Music] then I can right click it interpret footage and select remember interpretation then select the rest of the files that have the same input transform right click interpret footage apply interpretation now all these clips have the same input transform applied but we just have the two elements so let's now put them into a composition to access our CG render layers we need to apply an effect called extractor then we'll select the render layer with our character Forte now I want to show you one more way to apply an input transform let me first take the input transform off of our footage by going into the color settings again and then I can select preserve RGB which as you can read disables the color conversion for this footage then right in our composition I can apply an effect called Ocio color space transform this will allow me to select the same input color space that I had before and then my output space will be Asus CG since that is our working color space so you can use whatever Tech sneak you like to set that input transform as far as I know they're going to give the same results now in our composition we see this option here to set display color space and this is the same setting we saw here in our project settings how this works is that our project setting here just defines the display color space assigned when we create a new composition so say I set this randomly to rec2020 if I click OK and then create a new composition my display color space is set to rec 2020 but then here I can change this to anything I want and this overrides the setting now what the heck is display color space anyway well remember how our working color space is set to Asus CG which allows us to do more realistic linear compositing now the thing is linear Asus CG images cannot be accurately displayed on a computer monitor this is what my composite looks like in linear Asus CG the weird contrast in blown out highlights are not a problem with the image data it's a problem with how we're viewing it so the thing to know is that whenever you're using a linear workflow you always always need to look at the image through what is called a view transform this transforms our linear ACG image into a color space like Rec 709 or srgb which our computer monitor can display correctly in After Effects instead of view transform they call it display color space so again we can set this view transform to none and we'll see this the raw linear data but while we're working we want to set this to srgb or brex 709 it depends on the color space of your monitor now let's say we have a final composite and we're ready to export here's the important thing to know this display color space will never be applied to your final export again it's just for previewing purposes so no matter what we have this set to when we export this composition it will always be as if this was set To None to set the color space of our export we use something called an Aces output transform the output transform converts us from our working color space Asus CG to whatever color space we want say we like the look of this srgb display color space we want this to be how our final export looks We'll add this composition to the render queue then let's click on the output module go to the color Tab and here is the Asus output transform which After Effects calls the output color space let's set this to Output srgb then we can render it out and it looks just like we wanted now here's another way we can apply the same output transform here in the composition We'll add an adjustment layer as the topmost layer we'll use the Ocio color space transform effect again now what do you think we're going to set this input space to take a moment to think we're going to leave it in Asus CG since that is our working color space and we can set this output color space to whatever we'd like in this case output srgb once we do this our composite looks a little funny this is because the display color space is converting our viewport to srgb and this adjustment layer is doing the same conversion again so we have two color transforms stacked up we'll set this display color space to none and now things are looking back to normal so now as we work this adjustment layer on top functions as our view transform and when we export this composition the adjustment layer also functions as our output transform when I export this composition using this method in the output module under the color settings I'll want to check preserve RGB so that no output transform is applied by these settings now let's say we want to export this composition and convert back to the flat color profile of my original camera footage you might do this if you want to send the final VFX shot off to a colorist who doesn't want to work with Aces first I'm going to take off this adjustment layer and we can set this display color space back to srgb though again this doesn't affect our export at all then we'll add this to the render queue in the output module color settings I want to find the same input transform I applied to my footage and set it as my output transform now you'll notice I don't see that option here but if I click show all it will now give me the complete list and I can find the right transform with this sort of export we want to select a lossless format like exr or DPX to best preserve the original camera data and once we export this our VFX shot has the same flat color profile as our original footage for this project I exported in the Asus CG color space with a file type of open exr I then brought my sequence into resolve for the final color grading now I'd love to see what character you create again that mechanical creature kit is linked below along with the after effects project files for this video I hope you enjoy the new Asus update if you like these tutorials please consider supporting me on patreon linked below and thanks for watching I'll see you next time [Music] thank you

Channel: InLightVFX

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Id: x2sx-P5f-iM

Length: 9min 25sec (565 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 16 2023