ACES set up for Blender using OCIO

Discussions - Using ACES VFX
6

Hi,

The direct link to the .zip file (without history) is here: https://github.com/colour-science/OpenColorIO-Configs/archive/feature/aces-1.1-config.zip

Cheers,

Thomas

5 Likes
7

Hi,

I followed your instructions and i am starting blender with the .bat approach you showed.

I have some problems with gloss and normal maps.
Normally they are set as non-color data.
These are not available anymore.

NonColorData
NonColorData1354×2050 659 KB

8

Hi Sascha,

it looks to me that you opened a scene file that was not created in an OCIO environment and now it is missing the default colorspace settings?

Do you get the same errors when you start working with a fresh scene?

Greetings

Daniel

9

Hello there,
I tried to create a .bat file, but didnÂŽt work.
IÂŽm using Blender 2.82a version.

This is my .bat file:

Screenshot_3
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Thx!

10

Set OCIO-D:
etc
should be
Set OCIO**=**D:
etc

11

Thanks for this great resource Daniel.
Is there a convenient way to remove or organize hundreds of colorspaces that appear in the dropdown menus?
My resolution is HD, so I can not even fit the whole list in my screen :sweat_smile:

Screenshot-13

12

Hi,

sadly I don’t know how to solve this problem. Of course I ran into it as well. Especially on a smaller screen its kind of impossible to choose colorspaces.
Some tools like Autodesk Flame or Foundry Nuke have categories.
Sadly Resolve gives you just a long list which is also a pain.

I mean its all there in the .config file. The tools just need to make us of it.

Just a random example:
!
name: Input - Canon - Canon-Log - Rec. 2020 Tungsten
family: Input/Canon
equalitygroup: “”
bitdepth: 32f
description: |
Canon-Log - Rec. 2020 Tungsten



Best regards

Daniel

13

Hi,

I updated the page for the ACES 1.2 update. (https://www.toodee.de/?page_id=1720)
I also added the batch files content as text for a more simple copy&paste.

Daniel

14

I also added another page that focuses on the issues that I ran into with Blender & ACES so far:

  • All images should be exr files in the colorspace ACEScg.
  • Colorspace tranforms in textures will result in imprecise and wrong results when the image texture is a 8-Bit file!
  • Blender misses an option to select the OCIO file in the preferences – at the moment you must set the OCIO environment variable before starting Blender.
  • The list of colorspaces are not sorted in categories like it is in Nuke for example. The list is so large and long you need a giant screen to see them all and be able to select one with is at the end of the list – as a workaround you can temporally scale down the Resolution Scale smaller than 1.0 in the Interface/Display Preferences.
  • Be aware that you are working in a far bigger gamut of ACEScg – I wrote an article called Understanding Gamut with ACES and Blender about this topic.
  • Page update: Test of the Blackbody shader which doesn’t really works in ACES.

Lightbulbs_BB2700K_HDR_out_sRGB
Lightbulbs_BB2700K_HDR_out_sRGB1920×1080 197 KB

1 Like
15

Hello,
Could you elaborate on why this is happening in Blender? I do not render in Blender, but curious to know.

You can also unzoom (mouse scroll) in the shader editor tab.

Best

16

Hi kn9,

while I was in the process of writing a piece on the right usage of the IDT sRGB-Texture I came across the issue that although I used the wrong IDT (Out-sRGB) in Blender, pure white pixels were still at a value of 1.0 instead of 16.xxx in the rendering.

This issue I filed as a bug and got among the process this information:
“This is a known issue. Textures in Blender will be stored in 8bit memory if the source file is 8bit, to keep memory usage predictable.”

The colorspace transforms should be happening in floating point precision of course.
As a workaround to continue writing about this topic I pre converted the texture wrongfully in Nuke and exported as a EXR file.

Also in the process of writing the article I found out by mistake that zooming out of the shader node window allows to select any OCIO transform if your glasses or eyes are good enough to find it :slight_smile:

I updated the page and corrected some points.

Thanks

Daniel

3 Likes
17

Hi,

today I updated the Blender & ACES page on my site. I re-rendered some images with Blender 2.93 and ACES 1.2. I guess another update for ACES 1.3 will follow soon. 1.4. Blender & ACES 1.2 – Brylka – TooDee – PanicPost

Here again the main steps:

Setup Blender 2.93 to work with ACES 1.2 using OpenColorIO (OCIO)

Blender / ACES and color checkers.

Blender 2.9.3 Cycles rendering in ACEScg (View Transform Rec.709). The objects have all the diffuse material color values of the 18 colored patches of the color checker. The scene is only lit by one HDRI and the comp is a simple A over B.

All the images are exposure balanced to read RGB 128/128/128 in sRGB with the MAC tool “Digital Color Meter” for the middle grey patch on the color checkers.

Some years ago I could not find a simple step by step setup to use Blender with ACES & OCIO on Mac and Windows. At the end here I figured it out and noted the steps down for others to find:

  • Download the OpenColoIO config for ACES 1.2 (Release Candidate) from this link:
  • github.com/colour-science/OpenColorIO-Configs/tree/feature/aces-1.2-config
  • Unzip and place the config in your user folder or on a server location.
  • Set a system variable for OCIO to this path. This allows to use it with all applications that supports it and don’t have an option in the preferences to set the path manually.
  • Alternatively you can start Blender with the OCIO variable set only for one application.
  • On MacOS I use Automator to create an App called “Blender_ACES”. In this app I use a shell script to set the variable and start Blender.
  • For Windows I use a simple .bat file.
  • I did not find an easier way to do it.
  • Happy Blending

  • Oh, the latest 2014 color chart you can find here:
  • github.com/colour-science/colour-nuke/tree/master/colour_nuke/resources/images/ColorChecker2014
MAC “Automator” script and PC “.bat file”

Automator MACOS:
export OCIO=/Users/daniel/MEDIA/ACES/OpenColorIO-Configs-feature-aces-1.2-config/aces_1.2/config.ocio

cd /Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/

./blender

PC .bat file:
Set OCIO=D:\ColorManagement\ocio\aces_1.2\config.ocio

START “Blender 2.9.3” “C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe”
Best

Daniel

3 Likes
18

any idea about how to set up this in blender

19

Hi,

Maybe I can help. But I don’t understand your question.

best

Daniel

20

Sorry, my mistake.
I wanted to mean in linux. How to do this in linux?

I am using Kubuntu 20.04 i and don’t know how to use and set up ACES on blender.

21

Hi Uno,

I am not familiar with Kubuntu, but I guess the process to set a variable will be quite similar as it is in MacOS.
A quick google search gave me this result:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables

When you get it running, please share the commands here and I will update my page too.

Daniel

22

I was looking for a solution specifically for the Blender UI bug where all the separate options are displayed on-screen. With something around 350 entries in ACES 1.2, that list will cut off the later parts of the alphabet even on high resolution displays.

My interim solution was to edit the ocio.config file itself. Something that many people aren’t aware of is that the vast majority of the entries in the config are just aliases. These are designated with a specific family type, Family: Utility/Aliases. Out of 350 entries, roughly 250 entries are just aliases.

Now those aliases may be used by specific pipelines; for instance a Maya tech artist might prefer the aliases that use underscores for example. But they don’t appear to represent a unique transform. Deleting them from the list is probably the fastest way to solve the issue in Blender.

If you’re just using Blender then you’re done! Otherwise read on


See, if you set up your OCIO as an environment variable on Windows (as most people recommend you do) those edits you’ve made will show up in other 3D apps. And it turns out just deleting aliases is enough to cause at least Maya 2022 to crash on start.

So what we need is a special OCIO for Blender, with your truncated list, but a larger set for everything else. So my current approach is to set the OCIO environment for Windows to a correct/full ACES 1.2 config, then have a copy of that config that I use specifically for Blender. Blender will default to your environment variable version but you can use the .bat file technique Daniel shared to override it.

I tried initially to just edit the name of the ocio.config file to be something like “ocio_blender.config” or “ocio_global.config” but it seems that file name is important. So in the end I just made a copy of the whole ACES 1.2 folder for Blender and renamed the whole thing so that my config could still be distinguishable despite having the same name. My .bat file wound up something like this:

Set OCIO=C:\OpenColorIO-Config-ACES-1.2\aces_1.2_blender\config.ocio

START "Blender 3.0" "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.0\blender.exe"
23

The command to set a specific ocio on blender start on linux is:

Exec=env OCIO=/path/to//config.ocio blender

24

Hi all,

I know it’s an old topic but currently I have a config ACES 1.2 for Blender that I use in Blender 4.0 too but I would like to move to ACES 1.3 to fix some issue like clamping in some case. My setup I get sometime ago look like this (screenshots).

There is a way to duplicate my folder and just update the core file to move to the ACES 1.3 without changing my OCIO config ? Or tell me how to create the file needed to after update my ACES 1.2 to ACES 1.3 ?

Thank you,

Matt

Capture d’écran 2024-01-13 101925
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25

Hi Matthieu,

did you try to use the OCIO environment variable?
I need to update my pages to Blender 4.0, but the steps are still the same. (1.4.1. Blender 3.6 LTS & OCIO v2-release – Brylka – TooDee – PanicPost)

I am having three Blender icons in my dock on the MAC: default OCIO, ACES 1.3 OCIOv2 and ACES 1.2 (for Display P3). This works very well for me.

Best regards, Daniel

1 Like