Cinematic Color

This class presents an introduction to the color pipelines behind modern feature-film visual-effects and animation. Color impacts many areas of the computer graphics pipeline. From texture painting to lighting, rendering to compositing, and from image display to the theater, handling color is a tricky problem. Tired of getting your images right on the monitor, only to have them fall apart later on? The goal of this course is to familiarize attendees with the best practices used in modern visual effects and animation color pipelines, and how to adapt these concepts for home use. The course begins with an introduction to color processing, and its relationship to image fidelity, color reproducibility, and physical realism. We will discuss common misconceptions about linearity, gamma, and working with high-dynamic range (HDR) color spaces. Pipeline examples from recent films by Sony Pictures Imageworks will be included, with a discussion of what color transforms were utilized, and why these approaches were taken. Finally, we will present a brief introduction to the Academy's recent efforts on color standardization in computer graphics (ACES), and how the audience can experiment with all of these concepts for free using open-source software (OpenColorIO). This course is intended for computer graphic artists and software developers interested in visual-effects and animation. Prerequisites Familiarity with computer graphics fundamentals is preferred. Jeremy Selan is an Imaging Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks specializing in color, lighting, and compositing. His work has been used on dozens of motion pictures including The Amazing Spider-Man, Alice in Wonderland, and The Smurfs. Jeremy is the founder of OpenColorIO, and also a co-founder of Katana. His work on color processing has been previously featured in GPU Gems 2, Siggraph 2005's Electronic Theater, and prior Siggraph courses.