Controlling the Look in Viewports

Looks are basic colour grades that are created by a cinematographer to establish a visual mood for a scene during principal photography. However, the look must not be baked into the raw footage or visual effects because it is only the starting point for the final grading. Therefore, it is useful to be able to toggle the look on and off during finishing.

The look is only one part of a complete viewing pipeline that includes other steps such as tone-mapping and conversion to display code values. In the ACES system, for example, these are all discrete components that may easily be swapped in or out. However, in practice, you may receive a 3D-LUT file where many components have been baked into a single LUT. This greatly reduces flexibility and should be avoided, if possible.

OCIO views may be represented as a sequence of discrete components and may include one or more looks from the config. You may use the Look on/off toggle button in the viewports to turn the look(s) on or off. Alternatively, you may use the "Look Transform" toggle button in the View settings panel.

By default, it is always on. If an OCIO view does not contain a discrete look component, the Look toggle button will not be present.

When baking a view into images with the View Transform mode in the Colour Management tool, the look is always applied.