New members join in advance of Open Source Days on July 19-20 to strengthen collaboration and advance open source technologies for the film and media industries
Summary
- New ASWF members include CIQ as a Premier member, Evercast as a General member and Rochester Institute of Technology as an Associate member
- The Open Source Days will take place July 19-20, 2026 at the JW Marriott LA Live in Los Angeles and will take place parallel to SIGGRAPH 2026
- Bill Ballew, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, will be the keynote presenter at Open Source Days to discuss MoonRay’s evolution from DreamWorks’ Dragons to ASWF
LOS ANGELES – July 17, 2026 – The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), the leading open source foundation for the advancement of open source software in film, visual effects and animation, today announced three new member organizations ahead of its annual Open Source Days event, July 19-20, 2026, in Los Angeles. CIQ joined as a Premier member, Evercast as a General member, and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Associate member.
“We are pleased to welcome CIQ, Evercast and Rochester Institute of Technology to the Academy Software Foundation,” said David Morin, executive director of the Academy Software Foundation. “Each organization brings valuable expertise that will strengthen our community – an infrastructure that scales render farms, real-time review tools that enable artists to collaborate across studios, and the academic programs that train the next generation in OpenColorIO, ACES and other open source tools before they ever step foot in production.”
As members of the Academy Software Foundation, CIQ, Evercast and Rochester Institute of Technology have the opportunity to contribute technical expertise, participate in technical working groups, collaborate on open source projects and help shape the technical direction of the ASWF. Your participation will expand the community and bring together technology providers, studios, software vendors and academic institutions to advance the open source tools and standards fundamental to modern content creation.
Hosted annually by the Academy Software Foundation, Open Source Days is the premier event for open source software for visual effects, animation, and digital content creation. This year’s event will take place July 19-20, 2026 in Los Angeles, coinciding with the SIGGRAPH 2026 conference, and will feature a keynote address by Bill Ballew, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, on “How to Train Your Renderer: MoonRay’s Journey from DreamWorks’ Dragons to the ASWF.” Space is limited; Register here participate.
Supportive quotes
“Open source has always been the backbone of production pipelines in film and visual effects, and as AI transforms the capabilities of those pipelines, this foundation is more important than ever. CIQ is proud to join the Academy Software Foundation as a Premier Member and help the creative industry build an infrastructure that is open, resilient and designed for the scale of what comes next.”
– Björn Hovland, President, CIQ
“We are excited to join the Academy Software Foundation. At Evercast, we build high-quality, real-time review solutions that enable creative teams to share content and collaborate within the third-party tools they already use. This software-agnostic approach reflects our belief that open codebases, common standards, and diverse teams are the best way for software to help content creators worldwide. We look forward to working with this amazing community at such a unique moment in our industry.”
– Jose Aguerre, Vice President of Engineering, Evercast
“RIT is pleased to join the Academy Software Foundation and help advance the development and adoption of open source tools for the entertainment industry. Through a long partnership with the Linux Foundation and the establishment of our own free and open source Center of Excellence on campus, we have encouraged students, faculty, and alumni to contribute to important open source projects. In particular, RIT’s film studies, film and animation, and gaming communities have already participated in ACES, OpenColorIO, O3DE, and others ASWF projects and we are happy to provide them.” Our support for this important work.”
– David Long, Director and Professor, RIT MAGIC Center | MAGIC Spell Studios, Rochester Institute of Technology
About the Academy Software Foundation
Developed in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation, the Academy Software Foundation provides a premier home for open source software developers in the film and media industries to share resources and collaborate on imaging, visual effects, animation and sound technologies. The Academy Software Foundation is home to 22 projects including ACES, MaterialX, OpenEXR, OpenColorI and OpenVDB. For more information about the Academy Software Foundation, see
Media contact
pr@aswf.io
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/academy-software-foundation-welcomes-ciq-evercast-and-rochester-institute-of-technology-as-new-members?hs_ampu003dtrue
