OpenColorIO is an industry-standard, open-source color-management solution that is integrated in many content creation, editing, and finishing applications. OCIO uses configuration files to define the color spaces used for input, rendering, display, and output, as well as to automate the transformations between these spaces. You can use 3ds Max's default configuration, or choose a custom config instead.
3ds Max's built-in configuration file is based on ACES, the Academy Color Encoding System. It offers a choice of color spaces and transforms that are suitable for a modern pipeline. Alternatively, you can use a custom config file such as one that has been especially developed for your project or studio. You can download sample configs as well as get additional information about OpenColorIO from https://opencolorio.org/.
To set up color management, choose one of the OCIO-based options for Color Management Mode on the Color Management panel of the Preference Settings dialog. After that, you can select the spaces and transforms used for rendering, output, viewing, and display from the options available in the config.
The rendering spaces in the built-in config are all scene-linear, which is compatible with modern renderers.
You can set the global default for the display and view (tone map) transforms, or set them individually for different windows and UI elements. You can also override the defaults on-the-fly in a viewport or the Framebuffer window, which is useful for diagnostic purposes or if a window is displayed on a different monitor. If you are using a custom config, you should select the display before the view because it is possible that the available views depend on the selected display.
The transforms for automatically converting input images to the rendering space are determined by rules, but you can always declare that a file has a different color space when selecting it in an image browser such as the Select Bitmap Image File Dialog. The rules guess a file's color space based on its extension or whether a string pattern appears anywhere in the file's path and name. The initial set of rules are defined in the config file, but 3ds Max allows you to edit them to match the color spaces and file-naming conventions that you typically use (see To Edit Color-space Assignment Rules).
For rendered output, you can apply any valid combination of display and view transforms available in the config file. Alternatively, you can select to convert it to another color space — in the built-in config, you can choose any of the supported input spaces. However, it is best to apply no conversion if the files will be composited and graded in another software.