Open Source Color Management Solution Developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks Becomes Second Academy Software Foundation Project

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8, 2019 — (PRNewswire) —  The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), a neutral forum for open source software development in the motion picture and media industries hosted at the Linux Foundation, today announced that OpenColorIO (OCIO) has been approved as the Foundation's second hosted project. Initially developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks, OCIO is an Academy Scientific and Technical Award winning color management solution for creating and displaying consistent images across multiple content creation applications during visual effects and animation production.

"OpenColorIO is one of the fundamental open source projects in the motion picture industry, and it has become a critical resource for the entire visual effects (VFX) and animation community," said David Morin, Executive Director of the Academy Software Foundation at the Linux Foundation. "Many developers across the industry already contribute to OpenColorIO, and we hope to make it easier for them to do so."

OCIO is a fundamental tool for animation and VFX production and has been used on dozens of feature films including Spider-Man™: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man™: Homecoming, Hotel Transylvania 3, Ghostbusters, Alice in Wonderland, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Surf's Up, and Watchmen.

"OpenColorIO has always been a resource for the entire VFX/animation community, with many outside contributions and commits," said Michael Ford, Vice President, Head of Software Development at Sony Pictures Imageworks. "We want to contribute OpenColorIO back to the community that relies on it, and the Academy Software Foundation is the natural fit. The developers and companies that use it every day will guide the project roadmap, starting with the features and release cadence for the new 2.0 version."

Based on development started in 2003, OCIO enables color transforms and image display to be handled in a consistent manner across multiple graphics applications including compositors, image playback tools, renderers and color grading. It is compatible with the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) and is natively supported in commercial applications like Katana, Mari, Nuke, and Silhouette FX, among others.

Launched in August 2018 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation, Academy Software Foundation provides a neutral forum for open source software developers to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation and sound. The Foundation is also home to OpenVDB, an Academy Scientific and Technical Award winning industry standard developed by DreamWorks Animation for creating more detailed and realistic volumetric images.

The Academy Software Foundation will maintain and further develop the project with oversight provided by a technical steering committee. Developers interested in learning more or contributing to OpenColorIO can sign up to join the mailing list at Email Contact or join the Slack channel at https://opencolorio.slack.com

About the Academy Software Foundation

Developed in partnership by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation, the Academy Software Foundation was created to ensure a healthy open source community by providing a neutral forum for open source software developers in the motion picture and broader media industries to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation and sound. For more information about the Academy Software Foundation, visit https://www.aswf.io/.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world's top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at   www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page:  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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