Academy Software Foundation Welcomes CIQ, Evercast, and Rochester Institute of Technology as New Members

New Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) members join ahead of Open Source Days, July 19-20, strengthening collaboration and advancing open source technologies for the motion picture and media industries

Summary

• ASWF new members are CIQ as a Premier Member, Evercast as a General Member and Rochester Institute of Technology as an Associate Member
• Open Source Days is July 19–20, 2026 at the J.W. Marriott L.A. Live in Los Angeles, held alongside SIGGRAPH 2026
• Bill Ballew, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, to keynote Open Source Days and talk about MoonRay's development from DreamWorks' Dragons to ASWF

LOS ANGELES, July 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), the leading open source foundation for advancing open source software in motion pictures, visual effects, and animation, today announced three new member organizations ahead of its annual Open Source Days event, taking place July 19–20, 2026 in Los Angeles. CIQ has 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 - 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."

As members of the Academy Software Foundation, CIQ, Evercast, and Rochester Institute of Technology will have opportunities to contribute engineering expertise, participate in technical working groups, collaborate on open source projects and help shape the technical direction of the ASWF. Their participation will expand the community, bringing together technology providers, studios, software vendors and academic institutions to advance the open source tools and standards foundational to modern content creation.

Hosted annually by the Academy Software Foundation, Open Source Days is the leading event dedicated to open source software for visual effects, animation, and digital content creation. This year's event will take place in Los Angeles on July 19-20, 2026, coinciding with the SIGGRAPH 2026 Conference, and features a keynote address by DreamWorks Animation CTO Bill Ballew on "How to Train Your Renderer: MoonRay's Journey from DreamWorks' Dragons to the ASWF." Space is limited; register here to attend.

Supporting Quotes

"Open source has always been the backbone of production pipelines in film and visual effects, and as AI transforms what those pipelines can do, that foundation matters more than ever. CIQ is proud to join the Academy Software Foundation as a Premier Member and to help the creative industry build on infrastructure that is open, resilient, and built for the scale of what comes next."
– Bjorn Hovland, President, CIQ

"We're thrilled 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, shared standards, and diverse teams are the best way for software to serve content creators worldwide. We look forward to collaborating with this amazing community at such a unique moment in our industry."
– Jose Aguerre, VP of Engineering, Evercast

"RIT is pleased to join the Academy Software Foundation and participate in advancing creation and adoption of open source tools for the entertainment industry. Through a long partnership with Linux Foundation and 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. The motion picture science, film and animation, and games communities from RIT, in particular, have already been active with ACES, OpenColorIO, O3DE, and other ASWF projects and we are excited to provide our support going forward to 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 partnership by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation, the Academy Software Foundation provides a world-class home 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. The Academy Software Foundation is home to 22 projects including ACES, MaterialX, OpenEXR, OpenColorI, and OpenVDB. For more information about the Academy Software Foundation, visit https://www.aswf.io/.

Media Contact
Emily Olin, The Linux Foundation/Academy Software Foundation
[email protected]

SOURCE The Linux Foundation