Showing posts with label Docs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Docs. Show all posts

Friday, June 3, 2011

Color management

Ramen uses OpenColorIO for color management.
OpenColorIO (OCIO) is an open source color management project from Sony Pictures Imageworks.
It has been used on feature films like Alice in WonderlandCloudy With A Chance Of MeatballsSpiderman(s)Surf's Up, and Watchmen.


Configuring OCIO:


Ramen comes with a very basic OCIO configuration. It's recommended that you download the latest color configurations from OCIO website (download the one that says v0.7v4) and use them instead.
There are currently 4 configs: spi-vfx, spi-anim, nuke-default and iff. Please check OCIO's website for more info. In case of doubt, nuke-default is usually a good choice.


The first time Ramen is executed, it will create a ramen1.0 directory in your home directory.
The easiest way of pointing Ramen to the new color configuration is to copy the config.ocio file and the luts folder to $HOME/ramen1.0/ocio.


A better option is to create an enviroment variable $OCIO and point it to the config you want to use. This way you can use the same configuration for all programs that use OpenColorIO.
It's rumored that future versions of Nuke will use OCIO.
In the following examples, the nuke-default config will be used.

Reading images:

Ramen works in linear color space. Normally, you want to convert all input images 
to linear color space, do all processing and convert to your destination color space 
when rendering the composition.

When reading images, select the input color space in the image_in node controls.
The image will be converted from the color space picked to linear.




Viewing images:

There are controls in the viewer to modify the way the images are displayed.


From left to right, they are display device, display transform, exposure and gamma.
It's important to note that processing is not affected in any way by these controls.
They only change the way images are displayed.

Converting between colorspaces and other ops:

There are a number of nodes related to color management:

- OCIO Colorspace converts between color spaces.
- OCIO File Transform applies luts and other transformations.
- Log to Linear converts between linear and log color spaces.
- CDL can import, export and apply standard CDL ( Colour Decision List) corrections.

Image output:

The last step is converting the images to the output color space when the composition 
is rendered. This is done in the image_out node controls.



The correct color space depends on the output format and the output medium.
For EXR, HDR and floating point TIFF images, linear is the correct pick.
You'd use linear for images used as textures in 3d renderers for example.
For film output, use DPX or Cineon formats and a logarithmic color space.
Use sRGB for images to be displayed on a computer screen ( web, presentations, ...) 
and video ( rec709) for HD video.
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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Getting started: the interface.

Window areas:


The main window contains the following areas:



You can show / hide areas using the window menu on the menu bar.

Common hotkeys:

- Alt + mouse drag: scroll.
- Alt + shift + mouse drag: zoom.
- Home key: reset view.
- Dot (.), comma (,) keys: zoom view half / double.
- Control-click / right button click: show context menu.
- Delete / backspace key: delete selection ( nodes, keyframes, ...)

Numeric input fields:

- Alt + mouse drag increases / decreases the value of the field.
- You can also use the cursor up and down keys.
- Control-click / right button click displays a context menu.
- Simple formulas can also be used.

Composition view:

- Connect nodes by dragging.
- Control click an edge to remove it..

There are two special nodes. The active node is the node being edited.
It's parameters show on the inspector and anim curves on the curve editor.

The context node is a node you can display while editing other parts of the 
composition. 

Double click on a node to make it the active node ( red outline).
Control double click to make it the context node ( blue outline). 
In the viewer you can choose which node to display using the active / context menu.