The Academy Software Foundation recently wrapped its annual Open Source Days conference, the leading event dedicated to furthering open source software development for the visual effects, animation, and digital content creation industries. Video of all Open Source Days programming is now available on the Foundation’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9dZxafYCWmz_cvQYZl16KHEYfHWpHYqU
The Foundation was established in 2018, as a partnership by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Linux Foundation, to provide a home for cross-industry collaboration in the development of tools that power film and animation production. Today the Foundation has over 30 member companies including Adobe, AMD, Autodesk, Dreamworks, Epic Games, Intel, LAIKA, Microsoft, Netflix, NVIDIA, Samsung, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Walt Disney Studios, Weta FX, Warner Bros. and more.
Coming full circle to SIGGRAPH in Vancouver where it was first launched, this year’s Open Source Days event showcased the Foundation’s massive industry momentum and participation, with over 500 in-person attendees and even more tuning in virtually from around the world. News highlights include LAIKA and Skydance Animation joining the Foundation as Premier Members; the addition of the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), the global standard for color management, as a new hosted project; and the launch of a new Machine Learning Working Group which is kicking off with two projects already underway, Dailies Notes Assistant and Rongotai Model Train Club (RMTC).
All of these exciting developments come at a time when VFX and animation production is experiencing unprecedented disruption, with the Foundation bringing a welcome spirit of cross-industry collaboration and sharing that will strengthen the business overall.
“The Academy Software Foundation was created to ensure that we have a healthy, vibrant open source community that can maintain and grow the projects that the motion picture industry relies on,” said David Morin, Executive Director of the Academy Software Foundation. “Over the past seven years, we have seen a dramatic increase in developer participation, cross-industry collaboration, and community adoption of Academy Software Foundation projects. ACES is a critical project for our industry, and we are honored to provide a home where it will continue to thrive and grow.”
The Foundation Looks to the Future
ACES is an open source framework for color management and image interchange across the entire motion picture production life cycle, from on-set acquisition, visual effects, post-production, mastering, and archiving. It has become the global standard for ensuring a consistent color experience and maintaining creative vision, used on films including Captain America: Brave New World, The Wild Robot, Wicked, and more. Originally developed and previously maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for more than a decade, ACES will now be maintained by the Foundation, leveraging its open governance model, legal framework, and community infrastructure. This move will benefit both creative users and technical implementers, driving collaboration and integration between ACES and other key open source projects such as OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, and MaterialX.
The new Machine Learning Working Group was formed to plan, incubate, and spin out concrete open source projects within the Academy Software Foundation that use ML technology in artist- and production-serving ways. The group will also establish a community and communications channels for the ML experts across Foundation projects and members to be able to share information and expertise. Part of its charter is to lead the evolution of a vision, terminology, norms, and technology related to ML within the film industry that offer a positive, productive, ethical direction for ML-based tools that can help artists and productions.
The Machine Learning Working Group already has two projects underway. Dailies Notes Assistant will streamline the dailies process by transcribing dailies meetings, analyzing the content using a large language model (LLM), and seamlessly integrating notes directly into Shotgrid for production tracking. The Rongotai Model Train Club (RMTC), which began as an internal project at Wētā FX, will provide a VFX-specific framework for simplifying the production and deployment of ML models and datasets by clearly tracking their provenance and ensuring connection to rights holders.
Growing the Foundation Family
Skydance Animation has joined as the Foundation’s newest Premier Member. The Skydance Animation production pipeline leverages several open source projects governed by the Foundation including OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, OpenImageIO, OpenTimelineIO and Rez. Skydance Animation develops and produces high-end feature films and television series with full production capability across two studios in Los Angeles and Madrid. The studio’s releases include the feature films Luck and Spellbound with upcoming releases Pookoo, directed by Nathan Greno, Ray Gunn, directed by Brad Bird, and an untitled Jack and the Beanstalk project directed by Rich Moore.
LAIKA, an award-winning feature film animation studio known for its distinct artistry and beloved films such as Coraline, ParaNorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings, also recently joined as a Premier Member. In 2016, LAIKA received a Scientific and Technology Oscar® for pioneering the use of rapid prototyping for character animation in stop-motion film production, enabling artistic leaps in character expressiveness, facial animation, motion blur, and effects animation. LAIKA has been a longtime contributor to the Academy Software Foundation, with engineers active within the Open Shading Language project, the MaterialX project, and the OpenUSD Working Group, among others. As an official member of the Foundation, LAIKA can support the health of these critical projects and contribute directly to expanding the Foundation’s mission and addressing the needs of smaller studios.
For more information about the Academy Software Foundation, visit http://www.aswf.io.
