The Academy Software Foundation has welcomed three new organisations—CIQ, Evercast and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)—to its membership roster, a move that expands engineering, infrastructure and academic expertise within the open-source ecosystem for motion pictures, visual effects and animation.
Who joined and what it means
CIQ has become a Premier member, Evercast a General member and RIT an Associate member. Their admission comes ahead of the foundation’s annual Open Source Days event, scheduled for July 19–20, 2026 at the J.W. Marriott L.A. Live in Los Angeles, which runs alongside SIGGRAPH 2026.
"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 - infrastructure that scales render farms, real-time review tools that keep artists collaborating across studios, and the academic programs training the next generation on OpenColorIO, ACES, and other open source tools before they ever set foot on a production floor."
The new members expand the foundation’s mix of technology providers, studios, software vendors and academic institutions. Membership gives organisations opportunities to contribute engineering resources, work in technical groups and influence the technical direction of key open-source projects used across content production pipelines.
Why this matters
The Academy Software Foundation is one of the principal organisations stewarding open-source projects that underpin modern content creation — from colour-management standards like OpenColorIO and ACES to rendering and review tools. Adding a firm that focuses on scalable infrastructure, a company that builds real-time collaboration and review tools, and an academic institution that trains students on industry tools touches three critical points in the production chain: compute scale, artist workflows and workforce development.
- CIQ (Premier): brings expertise around infrastructure that can support large render farms and enterprise environments.
- Evercast (General): offers real-time review and collaboration tools used by studios to keep distributed teams in sync.
- RIT (Associate): contributes academic programs that teach students open-source tools before entering production.
| Member | Membership Level |
|---|---|
| CIQ | Premier |
| Evercast | General |
| Rochester Institute of Technology | Associate |
Open Source Days, the foundation’s annual gathering, is positioned as the leading event focused on these collaborative projects. This year’s program will also feature a keynote from Bill Ballew, chief technology officer at DreamWorks Animation, who will discuss the development journey of the MoonRay renderer from an in‑house tool to an ASWF project.
For studios and technology vendors, membership in the foundation can accelerate integration with widely used open-source tools and promote interoperability across vendors and productions. For students and instructors, university participation helps align curricula with the tooling and standards that studios expect.
By expanding its membership to include infrastructure, collaboration and academic partners, the Academy Software Foundation continues to build the cross‑sector network that supports the pipelines behind contemporary film and animation production.
