Massive difference in the look between Fusion and Color Tab

Hi all,
Im trying to comp and grade few 3d renders. I thought i figured it out already, but suddenly im having a big problem.
The image in Fusion looks fine, but when I jump to Colour tab for final tweaks it get really burned out and more contrasty. Are there any additional Color management settings in Colour tab that are hidden by default?
This is happening on a fresh Color page, i haven't added any nodes yet, no color correction whatsoever.

The images are rendered in C4d, Redshift - ACES. My Davinci settings are set to ACES colour science/ ACEScc. Input is default (No Input Transform since the image is ACES already) and output set to sRGB.

I'm not doing any other color space changes. Maybe that's the issue, but images are looking correct in Fusion. Outside fusion is wrong. Like it takes all the Project settings into consideration and then ignores it when i jump to other page.

What am i missing here ?

Thank you.

Maybe this?

This hurts my brain...
But i guess this is it. Very useful stuff. I'm trying to set it correctly now, but it makes no difference for whatever reason, ill keep trying. Color page has a slightly different result, no matter what i set in project setting or in Fusion View LUT. Besides, Fusion LUT wont affect color page in any way. But my comp has many nodes, one is Background>Merge which now I'm sure is affecting the final look in Fusion.

All in all, this is a good tutorial, plenty of information. Thanks for that.

Update:
I'm having a bigger problem now, let say im happy with the minimal difference. But now when i go to Color page and click the Bypass button to disable all effects and turn them back on i'm getting even more different and wrong results: attached screenshot. 3rd one is way to burned out. It almost like it doubled all the effects from fusion. I cannot change it back, unless i go back to fusion. This is all happening withing 3 clicks. No other work done between these 3 results. Literally just Fusion>Color>Bypass ON>Bypass OFF...
What's the problem here ? Is it a bug ?

repost just in case if it was missed

Update:
I'm having a bigger problem now, let say im happy with the minimal difference. But now when i go to Color page and click the Bypass button to disable all effects and turn them back on i'm getting even more different and wrong results: attached screenshot. 3rd one is way to burned out. It almost like it doubled all the effects from fusion. I cannot change it back, unless i go back to fusion. This is all happening withing 3 clicks. No other work done between these 3 results. Literally just Fusion>Color>Bypass ON>Bypass OFF...
What's the problem here ? Is it a bug ?

Fusion and Aces are essentially incompatible. Either choose one or there other or use complicated work around.

This is the same with the automatic color management system (DWG) added in V17.

My solution is to use CST in the color tab and not mess with the automatic system. I assume you could similarly use the Aces transform OpenFX in nodes on color tab if you really like to work in Aces.

Thank you. Ill try messing around with it bit more, but i get what you saying. But also i have no clue why would they include it in DaVinci if there is no way to work between them without problems. I guess i can output it out from Fusion and use final renders for the grading. That worked fine, but i lose the ability to quickly make amends to the comps.

Or maybe the aces is the problem. Who knows. It wasnt made for comping 3d Renders i guess

Thanks anyway.

Edit:
Now i can confirm - in project settings Color Science set to Davinci YRGB, Timeline color space set to ACES CC - my renders were originally in ACES from C4D redshift, hence aces.
In Fusion page, at the end of my node setup ive added ACES Color transform node, and only Output set to sRGB. Colours are correct in both Fusion and Color page, also it seems to be behaving like ACES - nice soft highlights, no burnouts, colours clearly more vibrant.
No idea why there is a seperate ACES setting for it in project settings. But something is clearly wrong with it.
Now also in Fusion when i disable the View LUT, the difference is almost invisible. So the rest of Davinci will see, or should see fusion results exactly as in Fusion. And nothing weird is happening with exposure in Color page. Happy days...

Once again, thanks for suggestions.

In Fusion page, at the end of my node setup ive added ACES Color transform node, and only Output set to sRGB.

You might want to double check this against your render reference. CG is usually exported in ACEScg (AP1/linear) not ACES (ACES 2065-1 aka AP0/linear) because ACEScg is also the rendering space.

Oh wow, i change it now and did a quick test, and oh boy, what a difference.
The image is tiny little bit less saturated, but when i start playing with grade, suddenly i have much more 'flexibility', colors are not clipping and clamping.

Than you for this suggestion. I think its almost there with all the tips from you guys. Or maybe that was the last piece i was missing.

I think your setup is still incorrect... You mention using an ACES Output inside Fusion to go to sRGB. This limits your ability to grade in ACEScct in the Color Page which operations happen after whatever you do in Fusion. Choosing a timeline space in non managed influences node LUTs, node colorspace and gamma changes and colorspace aware grading tools like HDR wheels, not much else. You need to set your ACES sRGB out node in Fusion after your MediaOUT so you can view that inside Fusion for reference but leave the comp in ACEScg so it enters the colorpage as such. Then convert from ACEScg to ACEScc or cct whichever you prefer and then do your grading. At the end of your grading tree place the ACES Transform to go from cc/cct to sRGB.

I'd recommend doing this via groups so you can place your IDT node in the group pre-clip and ODT in the group post clip so they aren't part of your clip grade and you can easily disable your grading nodes without removing your display transform when comparing results.

To check if your setup is correct, do a gain test in Fusion while viewing through your sRGB out reference node. There it should look like camera exposure with highlight roll off. Then do the same in the Color Page with offset. If it's the same behavior you are retaining all the dynamic range.

I think your setup is still incorrect... You mention using an ACES Output inside Fusion to go to sRGB. This limits your ability to grade in ACEScct in the Color Page which operations happen after whatever you do in Fusion. Choosing a timeline space in non managed influences node LUTs, node colorspace and gamma changes and colorspace aware grading tools like HDR wheels, not much else. You need to set your ACES sRGB out node in Fusion after your MediaOUT so you can view that inside Fusion for reference but leave the comp in ACEScg so it enters the colorpage as such. Then convert from ACEScg to ACEScc or cct whichever you prefer and then do your grading. At the end of your grading tree place the ACES Transform to go from cc/cct to sRGB.

I'd recommend doing this via groups so you can place your IDT node in the group pre-clip and ODT in the group post clip so they aren't part of your clip grade and you can easily disable your grading nodes without removing your display transform when comparing results.

To check if your setup is correct, do a gain test in Fusion while viewing through your sRGB out reference node. There it should look like camera exposure with highlight roll off. Then do the same in the Color Page with offset. If it's the same behavior you are retaining all the dynamic range.

I see, i don't know why it didn't occur to me that Color page wont be in ACES anymore. But that make total sense. Although it did worked ok to me. But maybe not knowing the exact theory behind it i cant see whether it works correctly or not. I'm glad i posted here. I'll do few more tests as you suggested.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this better.

Ok, this seems to be behaving like you said. If i set it correctly this time
White are basically grey, no burnouts.
In fusion: Gain set to 5, to exaggerate the effect. ACES after MediaOut (I didnt even knew thats possible, nice tip ) - first two images, left one Pre-Aces, right the ACES with the settings from screenshot.

But does this mean that any node i create in Fusion, any generator like Backgrounds, glows etc - will be inside ACES as well ? I dont have any node at the start of the whole comp, so technically it only enters ACES at the end if i understand this correctly, so my brains tells me all the generators will NOT be in ACES. They will only be converted at the end. But due to the project settings (ACES) everything i create is
automatically in ACES ? please correct me if i'm wrong.

In Color Page: No grading or any changes added. Gain from Fusion is still at 5.
Pre-clip group set to ACEScg>ACEScc, Post Clip Group set to ACEScc>sRGB.
Somehow it doesn't look exactly the same as the ACEScg from fusion. more washed out, the top frame of the building is almost invisible.
But when i disable the gain change in Fusion, both results are almost the same, the most exposed whites are less exposed on the Color page (Right image of the two not exposed by gain) so it response to exaggerated changes differently.

Somehow it doesn't look exactly the same as the ACEScg from fusion. more washed out, the top frame of the building is almost invisible.

It should look exactly the same. Maybe there's something wrong there. See if you are using render cache. Because the data entering the colorpage is still ACEScg (linear) the Fusion render cache which is outputting to an integer 10bit can't retain all the information so you need to turn it off. Alternatively you could pre convert to ACEScc right before the MediaOut in Fusion and do a ACEScc to sRGB behind it for viewLUT instead. This would enable you to use render cache to 10bit codec (because cc/cct is a log format) to save up render times and improve performance.
Again I'd also doublecheck if the signal path works as intended also by checking the +5 gain from Fusion against no gain but offset wheel upped in the colorpage at clip level between IDT and ODT.

But does this mean that any node i create in Fusion, any generator like Backgrounds, glows etc - will be inside ACES as well ?

There is no such thing as ACES data when it comes to effects or generators. It's all just a bunch of numbers and depending on how you treat the data it's one or the other. Because you are compositing your ACEScg exrs and treating it as such down the line any color you generate in comp will be considered with those primaries so 0,1.0,0 float e.g. means fully saturated green in ACEScg (AP1) color gamut. If you'd want an sRGB full green instead you could still pick the same value but convert that from sRGB to AP1 after generation so it becomes sRGB green within ACEScg and render correctly throughout the pipe. The same goes for any color data from other effects.

It should look exactly the same. Maybe there's something wrong there. See if you are using render cache. Because the data entering the colorpage is still ACEScg (linear) the Fusion render cache which is outputting to an integer 10bit can't retain all the information so you need to turn it off. Alternatively you could pre convert to ACEScc right before the MediaOut in Fusion and do a ACEScc to sRGB behind it for viewLUT instead. This would enable you to use render cache to 10bit codec (because cc/cct is a log format) to save up render times and improve performance.
Again I'd also doublecheck if the signal path works as intended also by checking the +5 gain from Fusion against no gain but offset wheel upped in the colorpage at clip level between IDT and ODT.

few post earlier @ZRGARDNE said Fusion and Color are not compatible, maybe they both using different algorithms to work out the conversion, hence minimal differences. And what you said about 10bit. Where would be that setting ? i cant seem to find it, There is one allowing 10bit Precision in view but its only available in Studio version.
Ive been clearing out the cache every now and then. And few times restarted DVR. But ill try ACEScc right before MediaOut, that seems to be the only 'obvious' difference for me.

But does this mean that any node i create in Fusion, any generator like Backgrounds, glows etc - will be inside ACES as well ?

There is no such thing as ACES data when it comes to effects or generators. It's all just a bunch of numbers and depending on how you treat the data it's one or the other. Because you are compositing your ACEScg exrs and treating it as such down the line any color you generate in comp will be considered with those primaries so 0,1.0,0 float e.g. means fully saturated green in ACEScg (AP1) color gamut. If you'd want an sRGB full green instead you could still pick the same value but convert that from sRGB to AP1 after generation so it becomes sRGB green within ACEScg and render correctly throughout the pipe. The same goes for any color data from other effects.

Waaay to advanced stuff for my brain but i kind of understand. It just the final step that matters.

@ZRGARDNE said Fusion and Color are not compatible, maybe they both using different algorithms to work out the conversion, hence minimal differences. And what you said about 10bit. Where would be that setting ?

Again they should give you the exact same result. The images you presented give the feeling that all values above 1.0 linear are being clipped on your color page. Yes they don't fully play nice when talking full integration with project managed ACES but if you know what you're doing in a manual setup there shouldn't be any differences. The cache part I'm talking about is found here:

5.png (8.48 KiB) Viewed 2958 times

Disable it or you could try changing the cache format to something that would support float data. (see bottom of screenshot).

6.png (35.32 KiB) Viewed 2958 times

Waaay to advanced stuff for my brain but i kind of understand. It just the final step that matters.

It's a lot to wrap your head around when first confronted with it. I found this site to be of great resource regarding the topic. https://chrisbrejon.com/cg-cinematograp ... stem-aces/

Ill give it a go later, with those settings. Thanks.
That ACES 'study' you've link is great. I don`t think ive seen anyone going into so many details when explaining it. I'll study it for a while, loads to take in. But I'm sure i will help in long term. Especially about CG rendering, cause that's all I'm doing. I need to understand it better. So far i didn't had too many issues inside Cinema 4D/Redshift, they set it up to work straight from the start. It even convert all the textures to ACES on the fly. But the compositing software are problematic (Davinci, AE, PS) It always takes ages to set it up right.
Thanks again.

No problem! If you want to look at the different setups I mentioned here's a simple scene with exposure nodes in both fusion and color page. You'll see that in all 3 examples (1. straight exr to color, 2. fusion ACEScg out, 3. fusion ACEScc out) you retain the same amount of control and exact same image result apart from maybe a miniscule difference with the offset node for ACEScc because you can't really translate the offset value to match gain because it starts at 25 and is somewhat arbitrary.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cnnmxlm24fq4m ... a.zip?dl=1

I think it's a good example because a lot of pixels in the exr go above 1.0 so if you see clipping anywhere you can tell something is wrong but really only thing I can think of as to why is that 10bit int render cache.

I did one more test but this time in Fusion i only used beauty pass, no other AOV were used. I thought that might be the case but nope. Still different results.

Then i disable the Cache option and boom. That worked this time. It was set to User.
That actually speed up the workflow. Before when i jumped from Fusion to Color i took few seconds to pre-render the image. And only after that i had to toggle off/on any node to get final look.

Ive also tried the Uncompressed 16bit float, that also worked with caching enabled. Bit slower but i think i will keep it like this. Spot on with those settings. Thank you very much for your help.

One more question thou, why would i need the cache to be on at all ? Whats the benefit of it ?I don't understand why that's a default option. Its slower to work with. Results was well different at first. Is it better when you working with videos ? more frames, maybe big resolutions, etc so it would allow color page to work more efficient if there is fusion involved ? Without it result was instant and correct.

Edit: it won't let me open that file. Unable to import. Different DVR version maybe. Im on 17

Edit2: Actualy correction - it is still wrong, but only when i use full comp from fusion. If i use only beauty pass and 16bit float cache then it is identical. So i think there is something wrong with the settup i have. It is showing me correct rgb vaules for the brightest parts, just below one. But the alpha is above 1.5 or even 2 in some spot. which seems weird. I guess that the issues here. Ill see what s happening. But i think i will leave it for this project. too many renders to tweak, and I'm already happy with the result i'm getting with all those tweaks.

Edit3: Huh, that was easy, some of the Channel Booleaon nodes had Alpha enabled in Node settings, even when they weren't using any alphas, disabling it fixed the issue. Now Fusion and Color is identical.
Still with the 16 bit float.

Yea the render cache is most useful for motion/multiple frames. It's slow with the cache set to uncompressed 16float because that format is a bit heavy but still makes sense if your comp is very heavy. Think VFX work on camera footage or complex 3d comps.

The file is sent is from 18 beta yea sorry about that. I made it on a non work machine so just testing latest versions.

Glad you were able to figure it all out!

I've been re-grading that stuff with 16bit setting and to be fair i think it slightly quicker. Before i had to wait good 5-10 seconds before Color page refreshed it, now its under 5 easily. Feels a lot quicker at least. No delays. But maybe that alpha change helped with that. Technically less info to process. But good to know about this, ill keep it in mind for the animation. Will see how much slower it will get but pc is good enough, it should handle it easily.

Don't worry about the file. once i update to 18 i will check it I'm just waiting for 'less' beta version Most likely ill buy pro version. It`s about time.

Anyways, i really, really appreciate all the help. I would never be able to find online any of the useful tips you suggested. I wouldn't even know what to look for.
Plus all the important info regarding ACES itself. It all makes so much more sense now. But still ocean of things to learn. Respect for the stuff you know about ACES, very impressive knowledge about difficult subject.

Thank you so much again Shebbe. And have good night