Maya ACES setup scene

[hyperviktor]

Could anyone possibly provide a maya scene with proper ACEScg setup and reference render to crosscheck our ACES setup ? There's so many confusing information about this it would be good to get a solid point of reference to crosscheck if everything works just fine.

Thank you!

[hyperviktor]

Anyone with a scene file ?

[lee_griggs]

What don't you understand about the workflow?

[hyperviktor]

I'm unsure about the entire setup I have - I've downloaded ACES 1.2 from github, copied everything to C:\ACES\ folder and created an OCIO environment variable pointing to the OCIO config file.

First, I have no clue if there are any further steps to complete this setup.

Second, I'd like to see if the setup appears right is really the right one.

At this point my color picker in maya gives me 0.303 value non color managed for a 0.5 grey which is weird.

When I connect a tetxure to the aiStandar shader, regardless what input color p I'm using ( utility - srgb or anything really from the list ) the render looks exactly the same.

Basically , I'm trying to crosscheck every single step in the process to see if I did anything wrong and how things should function.

[brian_Foley]

In Maya preferences - Color management did you set up for ACES?

You can follow this guide for ACES with Arnold to get your settings correct

https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/ACES+Workflow

And I highly recommend this free script as an in-program guide and texture converter.

https://gumroad.com/liam_collod#ukVVo

Hope this helps.

[hyperviktor]

No, it doesn't help, it comes across as patronising / taking the piss.

As I wrote earlier, I red all these articles / sources and I have a setup just like it is described in the Arnold docs.

I need to understand the steps of the setup and I need to be able to crosscheck what I've done is correct.

STEP1

I need to understand what are the files on github, why we copy them and where and if I did copy everything to the right place.

I have created an environment variable OCIO pointing to the config file, so every software supposed to read the same config which sounds fine.

STEP2

I have a full ACES setup exactly as described in the Arnold docs but I need to be able to verify that it is correct as I am seeing some weird things ( again, I did write this before ) - my 0.5 mid grey in the color picker when color management is turned off changes to 0.303 which is way off in my understanding and I don't know how can this happen or why.

[hyperviktor]

So no one here who uses ACES has a sample maya project ? Really ?

[Anonymous]

Hi
a scene won't help you if the rules are not setup correctly
in Maya Color Management:
OCIO Config Path: must point to: config.ocio (aces_1.2. or aces_1.1..)
Input Color Space: ACES-ACEScg

in aiImage or maya file:
Texture acting as beauty, color, or specular_color. must be set to: Utility-sRGB-Texture
Texture acting as data displacement, normal, bump, glossiness , roughness, specular, must be set to: Utility-RAW
Texture acting as environment exr, hdr, must be set to: Utility-Linear-Texture
by the way you have to provide a scene !

[hyperviktor]

Dude, that is exactly my point, I am trying to figure if everything set up correctly, that is why I'm asking for a scene + a rendered .exr of that scene.

So if I render the scene on my system I have something to compare the render to.

BTW I have the setup as you've described and still don't get the right results.

I don't know why this is so difficult .. 😕

[Anonymous]

can you put a simple test scene here!
just a teapot or a sphere

[hyperviktor]

Sure, here it is - I was making this based on an article comparing sRGB linear vs ACES and my render with ACES still looks more like the sRGB example.ACES_color_box.zip

I had to ZIP it as it didn't like the Maya file.

[Anonymous]

what do you expect to see ?
with & without OCIO

[hyperviktor]

Seems this is my problem, my render looks like yours without version which is clearly wrong and I have no idea why.

Actually it looks different than both your images ..

[hyperviktor]

Any idea why my render is different than your ACES render ?