Sony Pictures Imageworks Unveils Open Source Development Program

Sony Pictures Imageworks, a visual effects and digital animation unit of Sony Pictures Digital Production, said it has launched an open source development program.

 

Imageworks has been using innovative technologies to create photorealistic effects and character animation and the software they use are all based on open source platforms, mostly run on Linux OS. The company has stated that it is time for them now to contribute back to the open source community and so has made its advanced technological solutions available to be used freely around the world by both large and small studios.

 

The technologies that will be released initially are: OSL, a programmable shading language for rendering; Field3d, a voxel data storage library; Maya Reticule, a Maya Plug-in for camera masking; Scala Migration, a database migration tool; and Pystring, python-like string handling in C++.

 

The intention of the open source release is to build larger communities to adopt and further refine the code and also these popular non-restrictive licensing models were chosen to help ensure users have lots of options.

 

Imageworks' chief technology officer, Rob Bredow has commented that these technologies were designed and developed by some of the finest engineering minds in computer graphics and the company is pleased to be able to share them with a much wider audience.

 

While proprietary technologies have long characterized the visual effects and animation industry, recent years have seen increasing adoption of commercial technologies with proprietary solutions serving more specialized needs.

 

Imageworks has stated that a project that is laden with digital effects work is usually distributed among multiple companies and mobile artists to complete the work quickly. And if they all use standards and common technologies it will only enable greater interaction.

 

To launch these open source technologies, Imageworks engineers will be at SIGGRAPH, the international conference of computer graphics held this year in New Orleans, August 3-8. There will be a "Birds of a Feather" meeting around the topic of voxel data storage, on Thursday, August 6 at 9:30 AM in room 287 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.