Maya, Color Profile, ACES, Modeling Window and Arnold.

[Dpower357]

Hello Everyone.

Maya, 2020, Arnold 6,  OCIO = Aces 1.3.

Monitor = Dell, set to sRGB

I am getting into color profiles... again.  And I'm really trying to understand this.  ANY HELP is appreciated.

I want to check and make sure my set up is correct and I'm working properly.  I've attached a screen grab of my Maya preferences.  Can someone check it?  It seems correct and straight forward to me.

My typical workflow pipeline:

Grab a texture from a stock photography website.  It's sRGB, Convert it to ACES in photoshop, import into Maya, attach it to and aiStandard shader, assign it to my geometry, render in Arnold, save as an .exr. Convert as needed from there.

Questions:

1. If I have an image in sRGB color profile and convert it to ACES in Photoshop edit>convert color profile.  The image will be a linear color space of an sRGB image correct?  So I'm not getting the full benefit of working with ACES.  unfortunately many of my textures are sRGB, 8Bit.   What if I can't start with an image that is originally in aces or linear?

2. The geometry in my modeling window is crazy dark when I import and place an ACES image into my shader.  When I render the colors are way off as well. See attached image.  What am I doing incorrectly?

Ok.  That's it for now.  Thanks in advance.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Let Mayas file node do the conversion. 

[Dpower357]

How do I do that? 

[Christoph_Schaedl · Accepted solution]

Set the File Texture node to Utility sRGB Texture. Like mentioned here. 

https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/ACES+Workflow?desktop=true&macroName=multiexcerpt-in...

[Dpower357]

Excellent.  Thanks!