Quaterlight Pictures’ Christian Lett has created a colorspace management tool for After Effects, that will mimic Nuke’s method for handling footage with its read / write nodes. With qp Nuclear LUT you can actually show log color encoded footage properly in After Effects, retaining the over bright values.
Apply log-to-lin LUTs to your log-encoded footage in After Effects, just like in Nuke!
About qp Nuclear LUT
qp Nuclear LUT is a plugin that can apply and display the effects of logarithmic to linear functions while working in After Effects 32-bpd mode. This is something that Nuke does natively with its read and write nodes.
The plugin is pretty straight forward if you have ever used an LUT (look up table) before. If you haven’t, LUT’s are a way to manage what you are seeing and what you will end up with, basically setting that color information that you want to achieve from your starting source point, compensating for the difference between the two.
Before setting the qp Nuclear LUT plugin, ensure that the footage has the Preserve RGB setting applied in Ae, then simply bring up qp Nuclear LUT and choose the colour space from the drop down and which direction you want the function to go. the plugin offers a “To Linear (In)” which when used, will simulate Nuke’s read node, and also display “From Linear (Out)” when you want to write the image back to log.
There is a caveat that Christian notes “at present the S-log2 function is one way only (log to lin). The reverse function will be added when I can work out the math’s (it’s the most complex one)! I also plan on including PLogLin and S-Log1 & 3 when I can find/figure out the functions.”
Availability
qp Nuclear LUT plugin for After Effects is available through aescripts + aeplugins at a name-your-own-price affair. One note though – this is an actual compiled plugin, not a script or some jsx thing. As such it did take time to create and publish.
Christian Lett is giving all his proceeds that he receives to the Tiger Trust charity, to help conservation of the Sumatran Tiger. He also notes that donating via aescripts+aeplugins, you’ll also be helping to fund the running of this important After Effects resource. Thanks!
For more information on the qp Nuclear LUT plugin for After Effects, check it out on aescripts here.
