ASWF Google Summer of Code 2026

The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) is collaboration between the Linux Foundation and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving as an umbrella organization that is the home to many key open source software projects used by the film industry (primarily visual effects and animation production). The projects we manage are some of the most high-profile and widely used open source projects originating and used in film production studios. It’s a great opportunity for students to get involved with projects that will be used professionally on films!

The mission of the ASWF is to increase the quality and quantity of contributions to the content creation industry’s open source software base; to provide a neutral forum to coordinate cross-project efforts; to provide a common build and test infrastructure; and to provide individuals and organizations a clear path to participation in advancing our open source ecosystem.

Our Projects

Member projects are focused primarily on visual effects and animation production, and at present include 8 distinct software packages. Summer project applications can be for any of these packages individually, as well as potentially including tasks that bridge between them or provide common infrastructure (they share CI and other resources). The current member projects include (in alphabetical order):

  • ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) (GitHub) : A global standard for interchanging digital image files, managing color workflows and creating masters for delivery and archiving.

  • Continuous Integration (CI) Working Group (GitHub) : The ASWF’s investment in CI build infrastructure provides the industry’s open source software community with the solid foundation needed to improve best practices and address the unique challenges we face.

  • Dailies Notes Assistant (DNA) (GitHub): Aims to explore how LLM-assisted transcription and summarization can meaningfully enhance the VFX dailies/review session note-taking process, prioritizing practical utility and thoughtful support for production professionals. It seeks to be an open-source, integratable tool that improves accuracy and efficiency in capturing review feedback without removing essential coordinator responsibilities.

  • Digital Production Example Library (DPEL) (GitHub): A library of digital assets - 3D scenes, digital cinema footage, etc. - that demonstrate the scale and complexity of modern feature film production, including computer graphics, visual effects and animation.

  • MaterialX (GitHub): An open standard for representing rich material and look-development content in computer graphics, enabling its platform-independent description and exchange across applications and renderers.

  • OpenAPV (GitHub): OpenAPV provides the reference implementation of the APV codec which can be used to record professional-grade video and associated metadata without quality degradation. The primary purpose of the APV codec is for use in professional video recording and editing workflows for various types of content, and only uses algorithms that do not require patent or other licensing.

  • OpenAssetIO (GitHub): An open-source interoperability standard for tools and content management systems used in media production. It aims to reduce the integration effort and maintenance overhead of modern CGI pipelines, and pioneer new, standardized asset-centric workflows in content creation tooling.

  • OpenColorIO (GitHub): A complete color management solution geared towards motion picture production with an emphasis on visual effects and computer animation. OCIO provides a straightforward and consistent user experience across all supporting applications while allowing for sophisticated back-end configuration options suitable for high-end production usage.

  • OpenCue (GitHub): OpenCue is an open source render management system, used in visual effects and animation production to break down complex jobs into individual tasks. You can submit jobs to a configurable dispatch queue that allocates the necessary computational resources.

  • OpenEXR (GitHub): The OpenEXR project provides the specification and reference implementation of the EXR file format, the professional-grade image storage format of the motion picture industry. Additionally, this project maintains Imath (GitHub), a C++ and python library of 2D and 3D vector, matrix, and math operations for computer graphics, including the “half” 16-bit floating-point type.

  • OpenFX (GitHub): An open standard for creating visual effects (VFX) plug-ins, allowing C++ plug-ins (shared libraries) to interface with host media creation and editing applications, giving artists thousands of new tools and capabilities.

  • OpenImageIO (GitHub): OpenImageIO is a toolset for reading, writing, and manipulating image files of any image file format relevant to VFX / animation via a format-agnostic API with a feature set, scalability, and robustness needed for feature film production.

  • OpenQMC (GitHub): a library for sampling high quality Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) points and generating pseudo random numbers. Designed for graphics applications, the library is part of Framestore’s proprietary renderer Freak and is actively used in VFX production.

  • Open Review Initiative (ORI), comprised of two sub-projects:
    • OpenRV (GitHub): Open source version of Autodesk’s “RV”, the Sci-Tech award-winning media review and playback software. Open RV is an image and sequence viewer for VFX and animation artists. Open RV is high-performant, hardware accelerated, and pipeline-friendly.
    • xSTUDIO (GitHub): xSTUDIO is a media playback and review application designed for professionals working in the film and TV post production industries, particularly the Visual Effects and Feature Animation sectors. xSTUDIO is focused on providing an intuitive, easy to use interface with a high performance playback engine at its core and C++ and Python APIs for pipeline integration and customisation for total flexibility.

  • Open Shading Language (OSL) (GitHub): The de facto standard shading and pattern language of physically-based renderers used for film VFX and animation, ideal for describing materials, lights, displacement, and pattern generation for modern physically-based path tracers. Used in Pixar’s RenderMan, Autodesk Arnold, Blender’s Cycles, and many other high-end renderers.

  • OpenTimelineIO (GitHub): API and interchange format for editorial timeline information. OpenTimelineIO is a mature framework widely deployed across the film and television industries. It is natively supported in most non-linear editing applications, and has deep integration in game engines, digital content creation tools and adjacent industries as well.

  • OpenVDB (GitHub): OpenVDB is an open source C++ library comprising a novel hierarchical data structure, file format, and a large suite of tools for the efficient storage and manipulation of sparse volumetric data discretized on three-dimensional grids. It was developed by DreamWorks Animation for use in volumetric applications typically encountered in feature film production.

  • rawtoaces (GitHub): Converts digital camera RAW files to ACES container files containing image data encoded according to the Academy Color Encoding Specification (ACES) as specified in SMPTE 2065-1.

  • Rez (GitHub): Rez is a cross-platform package manager with a difference. Instead of installing to separate environments, all package versions are installed into a central repository, and standalone environments reference these existing packages.

  • Rongotai Model Train Club (RMTC) (GitHub): A VFX-specific framework for simplifying production and deployment of AI/ML models using well-tracked and rights-cleared datasets to enable clear provenance tracking.

In addition to typical software projects, the ASWF also forms Working Groups to tackle industry-wide or non-traditional projects such as continuous integration and other common tooling, zero-trust security, diversity & inclusion, USD, and machine learning.

Application Instructions for Students

Please familiarize yourself with the several software projects under our organization, listed above (each with a link to their GitHub repositories).

You may choose a summer task from any of our software projects. It is also permissible to propose (a) a task that is common infrastructure shared by the projects, such as with our CI system; (b) a task that crosses project boundaries or involves two projects; (c) a task that is technically in a non-ASWF code base but for which our organization is an appropriate mentor (as an illustrative example: adding comprehensive OpenColorIO support to a widely used open source project).

All of our projects maintain their own CONTRIBUTING guidelines, please read them for the project you are interested in. Most of them also have separate contributor license agreements (CLAs) which must be signed for them to accept contributions.

Successfully submitting a Pull Request to the ASWF software project you are applying to is a strict requirement prior to submitting an application. This is not negotiable. We will not even read applications from students who have not submitted an acceptable PR to the project they are applying to participate in. It can be a truly minimal change – for example, fixing a typo in an error message. The purpose of this requirement is to prove that you already have the skills to set up a GitHub login, successfully clone the project, build it, make a change, submit a PR, and interact with the community for code review.

In addition to ideas listed below, the GitHub “Issues” page for each project will have issues tagged “GSoC” if they seem like an appropriate size for a GSoC summer project. You will also see many issues tagged “good first issue”, those might be ideal candidates for your small trial PR to qualify for application.

Individual project’s developer mail lists can be found here: https://lists.aswf.io/

You can join the ASWF slack instance here: https://slack.aswf.io/ Each project has its own channel (you may need to hunt for the “browse channels” feature), please feel free to ask questions there, or in the #gsoc channel.

Application template

Please use this application template. You don’t have to stick precisely to this, feel free to expand or tell us any other relevant details, but this is a good place to start.

The applications will be judged both by the individual leadership teams of the software project you propose to work on, as well as representatives of the ASWF technical advisory council (TAC).

Applicant name:

Relevant courses, materials studied, jobs, programming projects, skills,
other open source projects you've contributed to. Go ahead and tell us
anything about your background that you think we will find interesting
for our projects.

ASWF project you are interested in:

Project proposal:

What would you like to do for your summer project?  Please explain in
detail what it is, why it is important, how it fits into the ASWF
project's overall design and goals.  Give specifics on acceptance
criteria -- how we can measure your success, how we can test your code.
Give a week-by-week timeline for expected progress and how it can be
measured.

Tell us about your interest in this project, what you hope to
contribute, and what you hope to get from this experience:

We will not review applications from students who have not contributed a
patch to ASWF by the application deadline.  It doesn't have to be
big -- a short bug fix, a new test case for a unit test, an improved
error message, fixing unclear documentation.  But you must prove that
you can check out the project, build it, find something to improve, make
the change, communicate with the other developers, and survive our
rigorous code review.  Please tell us below which fix you contributed:

Project size estimate:  (90, 175, or 350 hours)

Suggested ideas list

This lists suggested summer GSoC project ideas by each of our member projects. It’s ok to propose something different, but these are a good place to start. It’s ok to propose a project that spans multiple ASWF projects, or infrastructure that is shared between them.

ACES (Academy Color Encoding System)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/ACES
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Continuous Integration (CI) Working Group

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/wg-ci
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project: C++, CMake, build processes, GitHub Ac tions, Docker
  • Mentor suggestions: J.F. Panniset

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Dailies Notes Assistant (DNA)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/DNA
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Digital Production Example Library (DPEL)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/DPEL
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

MaterialX

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/MaterialX
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions: Jonathan Stone, Lee Kerley

Project Ideas:

  • Add Reference OSL Render to Graph Editor (issue)

    • This issue proposes the addition of a Reference OSL Render option in the MaterialX Graph Editor. When activated, this option would launch an instance of OSL testrender with the active material in the Graph Editor, ideally matching the camera, model, and lighting environment from the editor viewport.

      As noted in the recent TSC meeting, this proposed feature would provide developers and artists with a reference to which the output of production renderers such as Blender, MoonRay, Karma, Arnold, RenderMan, V-Ray, and OctaneRender can be compared.

      One additional inspiration for this proposal is the Stråla Graph Editor from IKEA, which is built upon OSL testrender and MaterialXGenOsl.

OpenAPV

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenAPV
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenAssetIO

  • GitHub: https://github.com/OpenAssetIO/OpenAssetIO
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenColorIO

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenColorIO
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions: Carol Payne

Project Ideas:

  • Implement OCIO within webassembly & develop a small proof of concept app in-browser.
    • First ensure working compilation of OCIO into WASM
    • Develop a small prototype webapp such as: image viewer with input colorspace and output view/display control
  • User / Studio experience flow – Develop a documentation and code example framework using OCIO tools (ocioview, command line utilities, etc) to showcase modern best practices for OCIO config authoring and application implementation, including but not limited to:
    • Custom view/display creation
    • Custom IDT / Color space creation
    • Shot-based look workflows
    • Integration with ACES Metadata File (AMF) and Common LUT File (CLF) workflows
  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenCue

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenCue
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions: Diego Tavares, Ramon Figueiredo

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenEXR

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions: Kimball Thurston, Cary Phillips

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenFX

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenFX
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenImageIO

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenImageIO
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project: C++17, Python, image formats, image processing, rendering
  • Mentor suggestions: Larry Gritz

Project Ideas:

  • Convert our existing Python bindings from pybind11 to nanobind. We’d like to fully switch over to nanobind for our Python bindings. This would require converting all existing pybind11 code to nanobind, which may have subtle differences in syntax and functionality. Beefing our our Python testing is probably also helpful. (This is probably a small, 90-hour, or possibly a 175 hour project, but certainly not a 350 hour project.)

  • Prototype converting the sample image viewer application, iv, from Qt to a more light-weight GUI framework, such as Dear ImGui or nanogui. The goal here would be to remove the incredibly heavy-weight dependency of Qt (of which we use only the tiniest subset of its functionality, for iv’s GUI) in favor of something much more light-weight and an easier dependency to build and maintain. This would start as a working prototype, but if successful could lead to a full conversion of iv to the new GUI framework.

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenQMC

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenQMC
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions: rendering, sampling, C++

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Open Review Initiative (ORI)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenRV (OpenRV) and https:// github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/xstudio (xSTUDIO)
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Open Shading Language (OSL)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenShadingLanguage
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project: C++, shading languages, compiler design, LLVM, CUDA/OptiX
  • Mentor suggestions: Larry Gritz, Chris Kulla

Project Ideas:

  • Feature enhancements for testrender:

    • “testrender” is a command-line based ray tracer (both CPU and GPU) that comes with OSL and can be used to render simple images using OSL shaders. It’s primarily for use in our own test suite for validating OSL itself, but can be a useful tool for testing and debugging shaders, as well as for generating reference images. (But note that it is NOT trying to be a fully featured and high-performance renderer useful in real production situations.)

      A variety of features could be added to testrender to make it more useful, such as support for hair, nonhomogeneous volumes, or other features. This could be a joint project with MaterialX to add specific features or capabilities that MaterialX developers would find useful to use in their testing, CI, and other workflows.

      This is a fairly open-ended project, but the priorities would be in the following order, starting with important goals and moving to more “stretch” and nice-to-have goals as time allows: (a) adding renderer features useful to the OSL project itself for being able to more fully test OSL features in important contexts (such as the aforementioned hair and volumes support); (b) adding features useful to MaterialX developers for their own testing and CI workflows and to use as a MaterialX reference renderer for OSL output; (c) adding features that would make testrender adapted to an OpenUSD Hydra render delegate, so that OSL shaders can be tested and validated in that context as well.

  • Overhaul/enhancement of osltoy:
    • “osltoy” is a sample application that ships with OSL, a Qt-based GUI app that runs shaders, lets you edit the code or fiddle with the parameters, and see the results interactively an a displayed and continually updated “image.” It’s a bit like https://www.shadertoy.com/ but for OSL, and it’s a local app rather than a web service. It’s a fun way to tinker with shaders, and some studios have used it as the basis for teaching introductory OSL classes. This summer task would be to turn osltoy into a more full-featured, slicker tool that can let people do more of the things that people do with shadertoy – including provisions for saving results from one frame that can be available to the next frame, making keyboard/mouse input available to the shader to respond to, etc.

OpenTimelineIO

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

OpenVDB

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openvdb
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project: C++17, Git, CMake, Knowledge of Houdini is also useful
  • Mentor suggestions: Ken Museth, Dan Bailey, Nick Avramoussis

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

rawtoaces

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/rawtoaces
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project: C++, LibRaw, OpenImageIO, raw image processing, ACES, color science
  • Mentor suggestions: Anton Dukhovnikov

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Rez

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/Rez
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!

Rongotai Model Train Club (RMTC)

  • GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/RMTC
  • Skills/knowledge relevant to the project:
  • Mentor suggestions:

Project Ideas:

  • Look for additional tasks in the project’s issues, search for the “gsoc” tag.
  • Feel free to submit your own project idea!