After Effects Optical Flares Missing

[Twyla Plack]

Thiswas a super helpful fun through. This is the closest solution i have found in After Effects as well. Im a little confused by the section discussing gamma shifts on layers like optical flares. You are saying to create layer with the following structure?

Setting the Levels to .454 kind of makes sense, as you are converting the sRGB input in to linear space. Is this the appropriate way of doing this? That would be a conversion to linear sRGB right? Wouldnt you instead use an OCIO translate from sRGB to ACEScg? This is my main confusion with ACES in AE.

This leads to my biggest misunderstaing. How do you set colors properly on effects in after effects? If i have a fill effect with a specific red value. How do i get the same value after converting from ACEScg to my ODT which is Output sRGB? Im struggling seeing how a lot of effects that are color dependent will work in AE.

I feel like that would sacrifice a lot of the benefits of working in ACES though. We have only worked with a couple of finishing houses that use ACES as their first option right now. So for us, its more about gaining the benefits of color blending etc and less about being able to export ACES at the end.

Ah - gotcha. This guide / setup is much more geared towards maintaining color consistency between a Rec709 workflow within an ACES pipeline / delivery, so that the colorist ultimately sees what we see.

Our specific workflow is usually delivering VFX / Graphics from our studio to a finishing house / colorist. Using ACES2065-1 - we have found - leads to the most consistent color from After Effects > Davinci Resolve.

For reference, here are the proper Davinci Resolve settings to use when importing your ACES EXRs from After Effects. I would use this to test that the EXRs were looking correct when importing into Resolve, even when working on a Rec709 monitor.

I am trying to build a pipeline that would fit most cases, in my needs I usually need to comp different video sources, and on occasion a CGI that can be beauty+shadow (EXR that can work in non-linear working space) but sometimes it is CGI that does need linearizing because of the blend modes .

There are some things that can pop up when working in 32bpc (certain effects not working right, weird glitches with blending modes) - however, if you are trying to deliver in HDR or just be able to get some sweet bokeh effects, definitely go for it. This is especially true if your CG pipeline is exporting in HDR from C4D / Maya / etc.

hi @caseydrogin why would you check Rec709 and not none in the working space in Ae? did you find any difference between the two when you are practically doing all the color management yourself anyway?

AP0 is the name for the primaries of the color space and linear is the transfer function that goes along with it. The name for this color space is called ACES 2065-1.

Similarly we have ACEScg, ACEScc and ACEScct which have AP1 primaries. ACEScg is linear, ACEScc and cct are log encodings.

After this If I stop it and check/uncheck the directional box in the game-view the lens flare magically appears! (But is still missing in the scene-view. FX effects are on)

But any changes on the lens flare makes it disappear again and the only solution is to check/uncheck the directional box again.

Creating a new scene like mentioned above not only reproduces this but I also get the following error messages over and over.

EDIT: They appeared after attaching the lens flare (Step 3):

One thing I had to learn, was that a Collider can cause the player to not see the lense flare, so if you have a Collider around your player to trigger stuff, you have to make sure its not around the camera. (ie camera is inside the collider) Also the Camera has to have a lense flare on it as well as it being checked on the light source (I use the light source to simulate the sun doing this)

I've spent the last 10 months working with a small production design group as their draftsman, concept artist, and creative graphics lead. My typical workflow is to take a client's concept, build a clear rendering using Capture Sweden, then upon a confirmed contract I will develop all necessary plots in Vectorworks. I often touch up my Capture renderings in Photoshop and add necessary elements that I couldn't otherwise do in Capture.

I love Capture, and it's freakishly easy to use for my purpose of developing concept renderings, as well as building pre-viz files to share with any programmers that come through our space. But I just can't help but feeling like I could improve not only my workflow, but the quality of my renderings through Renderworks and Spotlight. I have spoken with @EAlexander who has been incredibly helpful in opening my eyes to Cinema4D where I have been learning the basics of its rendering engine by bringing in some of my 3D rigs from Vectorworks into C4D. But I am limited by my free educational license which won't allow me to utilize the Hantmade Stage plugin, which is really the bread and butter of using C4D for lighting concept renderings (from my understanding - feel free to show me I'm wrong). I may have given up too soon, but without the capabilities of Hantmade's Stage, I really don't see how else to create beams and accurately display shadows of gobos, accurate intensities, etc. and feel as though I am at a dead end.

I guess what I'm getting at is I've found myself coming back over and over again to Renderworks with a desire to keep my entire workflow under the Vectorworks umbrella, but haven't found any solid documentation or resources on how to accomplish clean, realistic renderings of stage lighting. Every attempt I've made show's me how little I know about the UI, the process, and techniques and there is truly no start-to-finish guide anywhere detailing how to create a quality render of my stage concepts (without otherwise purchasing a seminar training course).

Attached are some of my renderings done in Capture 2018. I would greatly appreciate hearing from you all on how you learned how to use Renderworks for stage lighting concepts, whether I am better off staying within Capture to create my renderings, and if not, what the best approach towards learning Renderworks for Spotlight would be.

Personally, I will say that volumetrics in VW have become very disappointing since VW2011 was realeased. It is even more frustrating that the rendering engine introduced in 2011 is the C4D rendering engine. The issue is that VW really does not allow any reasonable control of volumetric beam properties. Also, there is no sense of origination scale of the beam using Spotlight instruments.

The latter can be worked around by building custom lighting instruments which is my solution. By doing that, you can have a beam of light that originated at the diameter of the lens. The former, however, is exceptionally problematic. The beams follow no law of squares and instead become brighter based solely on the diameter of the beam. That means, the beam starts off almost non existent and then gets brighter the further it goes.

@scottmoore I really appreciate hearing this. Lack of control in some areas and too much control in others has been my biggest challenge with rendering in VW. I'm still conflicted on where to lean towards - do I stay within Capture for purely rendering, causing me to re-texture, place lights all over again, and communicate changes between two different programs, or do I look for another solution? The quality of the renderings in Capture don't frustrate me as much as lack of specific control, and the fact that the software is lacking in performance in many ways. But I would love to be able to achieve a higher quality of renderings, and it seems that Vectorworks can't satisfy that need without its own sacrifices.

@LJ TMS I too dug through @scottmoore's posts and comments and I have to say, he's fighting for our cause! I had a feeling it wasn't just me... the beams I produce in Renderworks never look right and Scott has explained countless times where the engine is lacking.

I don't see where else to go from here. I have begun looking into upgrading my free student license of Cinema4D so that I can acquire a license of the Hantmade Stage plugin, but that still scatters my workflow between 2 programs (albeit C4D is far more compatible with VWX than other alternatives).

To me the problem is both VW & Vision excel at what the other is not very good at. Vision for volumetric rendering. VW for the rest (environmental & indirect lighting, textures with reflectivity and transparency, etc). While some might say that makes them complementary, I'd argue it makes it impossible to produce a great entertainment lighting render from either software.

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