Hey guys, I'm struggling here trying to get the saame result in my Mplay and render to disk output as the preview i have in the Redshift render view. As you can see the result is drastically different and i'm not sure if it's a bug or just a color management setting of the Houdini Mplay / output thaat i do not know of... or something else. My output is 32 bit, and i don't think i have touched anything related to color management in Houdini.

Also savinig out the EXR directly from the Redshift renderview does not keep the same result as seen in the Redshift render vieew. This beats mme.

Any pointers and help appreciated.

Cheers,

A.

By default, Redshift uses its built-in ACES color management workflow. Houdini's MPlay uses linear sRGB -> sRGB (gamma 2.2).

Note that no matter how you adjust MPlay's gamma, it won't produce the exact same result as ACES workflow. The "correct" way to ensure they look the same is to set upboth Houdini and Redshift so they use the same OCIO configuration.

Houdini OCIO config: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/io/ocio.html [www.sidefx.com]

Redshift OCIO config: https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Color+Management+-+OCIO+ACES [docs.redshift3d.com]

raincole
By default, Redshift uses its built-in ACES color management workflow. Houdini's MPlay uses linear sRGB -> sRGB (gamma 2.2).

Note that no matter how you adjust MPlay's gamma, it won't produce the exact same result as ACES workflow. The "correct" way to ensure they look the same is to set upboth Houdini and Redshift so they use the same OCIO configuration.

Houdini OCIO config: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/io/ocio.html [www.sidefx.com]

Redshift OCIO config: https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Color+Management+-+OCIO+ACES [docs.redshift3d.com]

Thanks for your answer, and apologies for trying to take a shortcut here as i doon't haave time to study the topic in depth at the moment. Isn't there a simple way to just bake that result in y render? Even the redshift render view won't allow em to save what i see out in the EXR. Which i think is rather silly. Why show me what i can't haave in my output?! :$ Either way, even loading up that render in After Effects and applying a OpenCOlorIO pug in....i can't find the same profile anywherre in that list, nor know where to go download it. (Aces 1.0 SDR Video).

Cheers,

A.

Adriano
Thanks for your answer, and apologies for trying to take a shortcut here as i doon't haave time to study the topic in depth at the moment. Isn't there a simple way to just bake that result in y render? Even the redshift render view won't allow em to save what i see out in the EXR. Which i think is rather silly. Why show me what i can't haave in my output?! :$ Either way, even loading up that render in After Effects and applying a OpenCOlorIO pug in....i can't find the same profile anywherre in that list, nor know where to go download it. (Aces 1.0 SDR Video).

Cheers,

A.

https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Render+View?product=houdini#RenderView-General [docs.redshift3d.com]

Try "Apply to file output" option. I personally don't use it so I don't know if it works as you expected, tho.

It's not a shortcut or something. You have to convert your images to a view space *at some point*. The recommended way is to only convert at the very end of pipeline, usually after compositing. But of course you can have a customized workflow as long as you know what you're doing.

raincole

Adriano
Thanks for your answer, and apologies for trying to take a shortcut here as i doon't haave time to study the topic in depth at the moment. Isn't there a simple way to just bake that result in y render? Even the redshift render view won't allow em to save what i see out in the EXR. Which i think is rather silly. Why show me what i can't haave in my output?! :$ Either way, even loading up that render in After Effects and applying a OpenCOlorIO pug in....i can't find the same profile anywherre in that list, nor know where to go download it. (Aces 1.0 SDR Video).

Cheers,

A.

https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Render+View?product=houdini#RenderView-General [docs.redshift3d.com]

Try "Apply to file output" option. I personally don't use it so I don't know if it works as you expected, tho.

It's not a shortcut or something. You have to convert your images to a view space *at some point*. The recommended way is to only convert at the very end of pipeline, usually after compositing. But of course you can have a customized workflow as long as you know what you're doing.

That's the mind boggling thing here for me.... "apply to outout" DOES NOT work ...it saaves without the color management prfile. And i can't find that profile in the After effects plug in OpenColorIO which should allow me too load the same ACES profile. I'd assume that i can find that profile somewhere on line and drop iit inthe preset folder of that plug in... but nowhere to be found. I'm currently digging into the Redshift folder to find a json file or anything i can uuse.... buut it really should be way eaasier imo.

Thaanks though. I'll do a fuull read of the link you sent. Thanks.

A.

Adriano
That's the mind boggling thing here for me.... "apply to outout" DOES NOT work
A.

First of all, are you sure it doesn't work? Do you save to EXR? ACES 1.0 SDR-video is not a linear space, but most programs read EXRs as linear by default. Therefore, even if Redshift correctly converts the output for you (I don't have Redshift in hand so I can't test for you), it might still display wrong.

You might still need to configure the program that reads the EXRs so it knows it's already in view space. Or, instead of "ACES 1.0 SDR-video", output to "Scene-Linear Rec.709-sRGB", which is most programs expect of EXRs by default.

Adriano
it saaves without the color management prfile

Forget color management profile. Unfortunately, EXR doesn't really support it.

Adriano
I'd assume that i can find that profile somewhere on line

A common OCIO config can be found here: https://github.com/colour-science/OpenColorIO-Configs/releases/tag/v1.2 [github.com]

Beware it's not Redshift's built-in config, however.

raincole
Beware it's not Redshift's built-in config, however.

Redshift uses an unreleased ACES 2 profile with OCIO v2, so it's kind of working in the future and won't be compatible with anything except maybe for Maya.

Houdini 19 supports OCIO 2 on paper, but OCIO v2 profiles are totally broken in Houdini, so stick with a v1 profile such as the one linked above.

Redshift should be able to use your common OCIO config configured at the global level rather than its bundled custom profile. This way all your software will be on the same page when it comes to viewing scene linear exrs with the same display.

I feel your pain. OCIO set up is a bit of a nightmare. And After Effects has a terrible implementation of it (a free plug-in that is hard to understand). As the last two posts say your best bet is to set a common profile.

If you're on Windows it's pretty easy to set a OCIO environmental variable. There's a section midway down that does a good job of explaining:

https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/Color%2BManagement%2B-%2BOCIO%2BACES#ColorManagementOCIOACES-Step1:RedshiftColorManagementSetup

Then at least everyone will be using the same ACES v1.x profile.

If you're really trying to hack together something because you're already far along, the ACES 1.0 - SDR is pretty close to Output - sRGB in ACES v1, which you should be able to find in the output folder in the AE plug-in. But as Raincole said, it's not really meant to be used this way. Scene Linear - Rec.709 - sRGB or ACEScg are really the two most common formats to output. But we've all been in the place where you just need to get the work out...