The Academy Software Foundation is pleased to announce that it has accepted OpenAssetIO as its newest hosted project, and the first project to enter the Foundation in the sandbox stage. The sandbox stage is the earliest entry point into the Foundation for young projects, to provide a framework and resources for continued development with the goal of graduating to the incubation stage within one year.
OpenAssetIO aims to give artists the ability to find and share deeply connected assets regardless of how or where they’re stored. Developed by Foundry, OpenAssetIO is an open source interoperability standard between tools and asset management systems that reduces the integration effort and maintenance overhead of content creation pipelines. OpenAssetIO pioneers new, scalable, standardized asset-centric workflows by enabling tools and asset management systems to freely communicate with each other, without needing to know any specifics of their respective implementations. This leads to greater interoperability and creative collaboration compared to traditional file-based workflows.
“We’re thrilled to welcome OpenAssetIO into the Academy Software Foundation as a sandbox project. OpenAssetIO is a forward-thinking interoperability tool that enables better integration between software and data in asset-centric workflows,” commented David Morin, Executive Director, Academy Software Foundation. “It has demonstrated value to both developers and artists already and, through the sandbox phase, the OpenAssetIO team now has the opportunity to collect broader industry input to plan the next phase of development.”
“As the demand for more content continues to rise, our industry is scaling up with nimbler and more distributed ways of working. Our hope is that OpenAssetIO lays a foundation over which any creative tool can build better workflows to meet the challenge of how artists need to collaborate at scale,” said Mathieu Mazerolle, Director of Product, New Technology at Foundry. “We’re excited to have the Foundation’s support behind this project, and with it the open source spirit that we believe is essential for sustainable industry transformation.”
Moving forward, the Academy Software Foundation will maintain and further develop OpenAssetIO with oversight from a Technical Steering Committee, led by maintainers Tom Cowland and David Feltell from Foundry. OpenAssetIO is currently building toward a v1.0.0 release, validating end-to-end workflows with proofs of concept and design input from 15 companies including DNEG, Pixar, Amazon Web Services, Animal Logic, Blizzard, and Blender. OpenAssetIO is also looking to add compatibility with OpenTimelineIO and USD.
Developers interested in learning more or contributing to OpenAssetIO can visit https://tac.aswf.io/engagement/#OpenAssetIO.
Companies interested in supporting the mission of the Academy Software Foundation can learn more and join at aswf.io/join.
