Color management gives you the advantages of a scene-linear workflow, while still showing a preview that is appropriate for your display in the viewport and Render View. The default color management system is OpenColorIO v2 (OCIO v2).
For background information about OCIO, visit opencolorio.org.
Open the Color Management Preferences and make sure that color management is enabled.
Normally, color management is enabled by default for new scenes, but you can change this behavior in the New Scene Options.
environment: {}
If you have set the OCIO environment variable to the name and path of a configuration file before starting Maya, then OCIO Config Path is read-only.
The color space determined by the rules will be used by default as the initial setting for new 2D File textures and other image inputs. You can still change each one individually as described in Specify the color space for textures and other image inputs.
When you add 2D File textures and other image inputs to your scene, you need to specify their input Color Space if it is different from the one assigned by the rules. See Specify the color space for textures and other image inputs for more information.
As you work, the view and display transforms provide a preview of the final colors in the viewport and Render View. However, you can temporarily toggle the view and display transforms off or choose a different view for diagnostic or other purposes. See Preview color-managed scenes.
For playblasts, the Apply Output Transform to Playblast option applies the selected transform to convert from the rendering space. Normally this option should be on, to allow the result to be played with devices or viewing software that do not apply the appropriate view transform to scene-linear images.
When you render the scene, you have the option of baking in an output transform, depending on whether you are rendering a preview or rendering images for further processing like compositing. See Render color-managed scenes.
The defaultViewColorManager node is still available in scenes for compatibility. However, its options are not used.