This project can be your starting point of ACES workflow in Blender.

• Default display mappings from Blender are retained. (e.g., standard sRGB, filmic, filmic log)
• Default Looks are also retained.
• ACES 1.3 (Release note)
• Blender 3.6

IMPORTANT

Some configurations you can find online also contains Blender default transforms. But most of them are totally wrong.

Since scene linear in Blender's default config is Rec.709+Linear while scene linear in ACES is defined as ACEScg (AP1+Linear), simply copying & pasting won't work as you expect. Additional color transform is required. Otherwise, the color would be slightly darker than it was supposed to be.

• Backup default color management folder.

  It depends on your installation location, for example:

  C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.2\3.2\datafiles\colormanagement

• Copy these items into Blender's colormanagement folder.

  • config.ocio
  • luts
  • filmic
  • aces_luts

• Open Blender and check Color Management panel in Render Properties.

• Done.

Here is an Windows batch file example, assuming Blender-ACES-Config has been cloned into D:\Blender-ACES-Config and Blender has been installed at C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.2\.

set OCIO=D:\Blender-ACES-Config\config.ocio

start "Blender (ACES workflow)" "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.2\blender.exe"

Copy the script to a text file, edit the paths according to your situation and save the text file with .bat extension. Then run Blender using the batch file.

The advantage of this method is that you can use Blender without ACES config by launching from desktop shortcuts or the Start menu as usual.

Blender uses the OCIO standard environment variable - OCIO - to read an OCIO configuration. So you can set the OCIO environment variable to the path of your configuration.

But this is a highly discouraged method. It can mess up other software which uses OCIO as color management backend. Blender should provide an alternative environment variable, for example BLENDER_OCIO，to avoid this problem.

Left: original filmic sRGB display transform (in which scene linear color space uses sRGB color primaries).

Right: ACES workflow filmic sRGB display transform (in which scene linear color space uses AP1)

Left: standard sRGB display:

• Blender built-in workflow (in which scene linear uses sRGB color primaries)

Right: ACES sRGB display:

• ACES workflow (in which scene linear uses AP1 color primaries)
• sRGB display (RRT + sRGB output)

You should leave the other entries intact.

ACES v1.3 config and LUTs

Blender

OpenColorIO

ACES