Add a Minimal Set of ACES Settings to Blender

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This is NOT intended for professional use; it's just me playing around to figure out ACES.

If you want a good practical, slimmed version of ACES to work with in Blender, check out Filmic Blender.

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Installation

• Navigate to the colormanagement folder inside the Blender app bundle.
  • on Mac: /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.91/datafiles/colormanagement/
• Add the aces folder alongside filmic and luts.
• Replace config.ocio (first save a backup copy of the Blender default!) with the one provided.

For usage instructions, watch Using ACES in Blender.

Alternate Option – The Full Set

Shortly after I created this repo, the folks at Color Science posted a release that comes to 124mb. If you want to use the full set of configs, you can follow the installation instructions shown above, with these changes:

• Download OpenColorIO Config ACES 1.2.
• Rename the luts folder (OpenColorIO-Config-ACES-1.2 2/aces_1.2/luts) to aces, and copy to the colormanagement folder.
• Download aces_1.2_config.ocio from this repo, rename it to config.ocio, and relace the existing file in the colormanagement folder.

Known Conflicts

• KIT OPS - After inserting a decal, you will need to go into the Material and set the color space manually.
• The Color Picker uses the sRGB model, even in ACES, so your sRGB color values may shift (for example, purples may shift to blue).
  • To switch to the ACES Color Picker, change line 14 in config.ocio to color_picking: Output - sRGB.

So, Why Make A Minimized Set?

• Simplified list of Color Settings: From dozens down to 15, of which you'll commonly use only three.
• Faster to D/L: The full OpenColorIO-Configs source files are several Gb.
• Takes up less drive space: About ~50Mb.

Inspired by Mario Cazares' videos (links below) on ACES in Blender, I gave it a try, but ran into two inconveniences:

• The full repo of ACES configs from colour-science/OpenColorIO-Configs is several Gb. The v1.2 folder by itself is several hundred Mb.
• The list of Color Spaces is so long, it gets cut off in the dropdown.

So, to make the package smaller and friendler, I reduced the colormanagement folder to ~50Mb by:

• Deleting all Directories except for v1.2
• Deleting SPI3Ds that are no longer referenced in config.ocio
• Stripping all Colorspaces from config.ocio except for:
  • The three Cazares recommends using
    • Utility - Linear - sRGB (for HDRIs and EXRs)
    • Utility - sRGB - Texture (for Color Textures, JPG and PNG)
    • Utility - Raw (for Non-Color Textures)
  • A few others kept for either technical or arbitrary reasons
    • ACES - ACES2065-1
    • ACES - ACEScc
    • ACES - ACEScct
    • ACES - ACESproxy
    • ACES - ACEScg
    • Input - ADX - ADX10
    • Output - Rec.2020
    • Output - Rec.709
    • Output - sRGB
    • Utility - LMT Shaper
    • Utility - Linear - Adobe RGB
    • Utility - Linear - Adobe Wide Gamut RGB

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Links

• OpenColorIO-Configs
• Filmic Blender

Mario Cazares' videos on adding ACES to Blender

• Setup ACES in Blender
• Using ACES in Blender | Short Tutorial