Use an OCIO configuration file with SynColor

The legacy SynColor color management system supports the use of OCIO v1 configuration files. However, it is better to use the default OCIO color management system, which supports both v1 and v2 configurations.

If you want to use an OCIO v1 configuration in SynColor mode anyway:

1. In your Color Management preferences , make sure that Enable Color Management is activated and other options are set as described in Important settings for color management.
2. Enter the full, absolute path of a valid OpenColorIO configuration file in OCIO Config Path.
3. Activate Use OCIO configuration.
   • If the configuration file is not valid, you will be prompted to use the natively supported color spaces. If you click No, you will be prompted to select a different configuration file.
   • When switching between configurations, color spaces are matched by name. If any of the color spaces used in the current scene are not defined in the current configuration, a message will appear. In addition, any missing color spaces in image input nodes are highlighted in red in the Attribute Editor and no transformation is applied. See Fix missing color transforms.
4. Optionally, you can toggle Use OCIO Input Color Space Rules, depending on whether you want to use the standard OpenColorIO rules to assign initial input color spaces to File textures and other image inputs when they are added to a scene. The OpenColorIO rules consider whether the color space name appears in the file name.
   • When Use OCIO Input Color Space Rules is on, only OCIO Standard Rule and Default appear in Input Color Space Rules below. You cannot add any other rules, and you cannot reorder them. You can only specify a color space for the Default rule, which is used only when the OCIO Standard Rule does not specify any color space for a particular file.
   • When this option is off, you can define your own rules to assign color spaces to input images in Input Color Space Rules. However, the available color spaces are restricted to those defined in the OCIO configuration file. See Define rules to assign color spaces for input files.

Note: If you experience delays related to color management when starting Maya, make sure that the OCIO configuration file has an environment section. It does not matter if the section is empty, for example:

environment:
  {}