Combustion 2008 - colour warper
by Oded Erell
on
May 17, 2009 at 5:39:48 pm
Hi all,
When the Combustion 2008 upgrade was released,
I bought it immediately,
Being so happy that this program was continuing,
And the fact that the upgrade was just the Colour Warper, Vectorscope and some UI touches, didn't bother me
(my admiration for discreet or AME color tools and approach was such, that I didn't look at it as a small upgrade but a great one)
I soon found out that the colour warper crushes in 32 bit float, and I posted about it in the back than autodesk discussion group.
I didn't find out about the 10, 12, 16 bit Colour Warper save problem until yesterday, when I started needing it in production.
To be practical,
When you save and reload (or export the node itself and import) a Combustion workspace using the Colour Warper on a higher than 8 bit color footage,
It's gamma/luma setup gets corrupted.
It's a set of numbers in the file that apparently don't get written correctly for higher than 8 bit color.
if you reset the gamma section of the tool, in the master and in the selective, it will fix it, providing that you didn't use the tool to gamma correct...
I don’t care whether AME decides to continue the product or not,
I am free to decide whether to continue purchasing AME or not.
But the fact that they don't bother to fix the product I already bought is disturbing.
When I purchased the 2008 upgrade,
All I purchased was the Colour Warper.
I feel that with the 2008 Upgrade I bought a defective product.
And I can’t take this lightly.
If there is a fix or a patch that I missed,
Or if there was a clear statement that the Combustion 2008 Colour Warper operates in 8 bit color only,
I'd love to know about it and take everything I said back.
I would feel better thinking that it’s me to blame for not doing the research.
Re: Combustion 2008 - colour warper by ayman abdel-basset on May 19, 2009 at 6:35:40 am
Oded Erell,
would you send sample of your footage to give a try?
Danko,
i remmber i was involved with your previous problem..
this time i downloaded your DPX footage..and it worked fine!
Yes it gave me the dark view once i applied the Color wraper..
but when i selected color to change..
it turned to its normal mode and everything is fine!
Re: Combustion 2008 - colour warper by Danko Dolch on May 19, 2009 at 8:00:12 am
Hi Ayman!
>Yes it gave me the dark view once i applied the Color wraper..
>but when i selected color to change..
>it turned to its normal mode and everything is fine!
What do you mean with "i selected color to change"? Can You describe more detailed what buttons of the color warper node you have pressed?
I had some strange effects with the color corrector node - not the color warper - if ein switched between edot node view and color corrector view the viewport also had this gamma shift - but after a click on the color corrector interface it turned right... but that doesn't work with colro warper - and this only was a viewport switching problem - the rendering of workspaces was fine - with color warper instead you ge wrong rendered workspaces on the render output...
--> What is the combustion version you are working with? I use 2008.0.0.330
--> Color Warper ist the only great extension of the 2008 release and so it should be possible to fix a wrong gamma setup in the workspace file without a dedicated dev. team - slowing down the toxic dev...
--> Color Warper float: I don't have a crash on float projects - just the same gamma shift + histogramm is scaled from 0 to 512...
--> If there is anybody out there lucky enough to use Color Warper with higher than 8Bit color deep - Please let us know! I don't know anyone...
Re: Combustion 2008 - colour warper by Kenneth La Rue on May 20, 2009 at 2:51:49 pm
Hi Guys,
This is a work around but try it, leave the "work on" option to the selective you have adjusted. Tell me if you see the end result correctly? If you need to make adjustments to the master level add another Colour warper on top of the first one.
Re: Combustion 2008 - colour warper by Danko Dolch on May 20, 2009 at 4:23:38 pm
Hi Ken!
Thanks for responding!
I've tried your suggestion and found out this:
1. As long as I don't save the workspace everything works fines exept the 0-512 histogram scale on 32bit float colors - viewport is ok I only would expect 0-1 scale...
2. If I load a workspace the color warper gamma/luma values are corrupt and the tones are mapped near black.
3. I can't make adjustments zu the color warper sliders - after reseting the node everything ist fine again, but CC settings are gone.
4. If I apply a color warper node set it to "Sel 1" in the secondaries set the key to the hole image and do a coorection - saving and reloading the workspace - setting "Sel 1" active again: I have the same effect as on the master - gamma/luma corrupt...
5. If I load a workspace with corrupt color warper settings and switch to a unused secondary - viewport and histogram returns to normal conditions. But I think this is normal because it's like assigning a new node without corrupt gamma/luma settings or doing a reset - no corrupt values are saved in the workspace for a unused secondary...
6. I cant get it working with a stacked second color warper node as a work around because every channel I use Master or Sel 1 or 2 or 3 gets corrupted on save.
7. Exporting the color warper settings as external ".cbs" is working fine but not a work around because I can't reload hundreds of color warper settings manualy every time after loading a workspace or save them every time a make an adjustment to a color warper node.
--> QUESTION:
If the .cbs file is valid - why is it impossible to fix this and write the correct values to the .cws file??? Would do it by myself but there is no documentation of the .cws format nor a scripting option inside combustion to automate the export of correct color warper settings :-(
can' be impossible to fix this - it's only about some wrong gamma/luma values in a text file...
Re: Combustion 2008 - colour warper by Oded Erell on May 21, 2009 at 8:05:23 pm
Hi all,
Thanks for the response,
Ayman, I don’t know how to upload a sample (sorry...),
But I uploaded screenshots.
I tried this with different formats,
And it behaved the same.
I tried 10bit film scan DPX,
16 bit TIFF sequences,
16 PSD,
They all behave the same.
My current workaround is that I just don’t use Colour Warper
to correct gamma/luma,
And when I reopen the workspace, I reset the gamma section of the tool.
I hate that, but I can go on working like that.
I think that AME is professionally obligated to publish a service pack for this release, and fix these problems.
I know that everybody thinks I'm crazy for saying that because, their guessing that combustion will be discontinued,
But that has absolutely nothing to do with whether The product will continue or not,
It has to function properly.
More that ten years in digital media,
have made me get used to bugs, and little quirks,
And instabilities, that are found in many tools of the trade,
And I agree that finding workarounds is many times part of the job.
But in this particular instance it makes me feel really bad,
this is a specific functionality, that I purchased,
It's not some third party goody plugin effect,
But a top end AME color correction tool from inferno and flame!
That’s what I purchased.
And it's dysfunctional.
The atmosphere created by the rumors and guesses of combustion discontinuation, create a notion that asking that bugs will be fixed in the product is irrelevant,
Thats not right, Bugs should be fixed.
If I'm not mistaken, Almost 18 month have passed since it was released.
AME absolutely must fix the Combustion Colour Warper dysfunctionality.
Anyway, thanks for the tips,
at least I know it doesn't happen only on my system...
