ASWF TAC Meeting - February 10, 2021

Video Conference Link

Voting member attendance

  • Kimball Thurston - Chairperson, Weta Digital Limited
  • Bill Roberts, Adobe
  • Gordon Bradley, Autodesk
  • Henry Vera, DNEG
  • Bill Ballew, DreamWorks Animation
  • Matt Kuhlenschmidt, Epic Games, Inc.
  • Brian Cipriano, Google & OpenCue Representative
  • Sean C McDuffee, Intel Corporation
  • Larry Gritz, Sony Pictures Imageworks
  • Jean-Francois Panisset, VES Technology Committee
  • Cory Omand, The Walt Disney Studios
  • Daniel Heckenberg - Animal Logic Pty Ltd
  • Eric Enderton, NVIDIA
  • Sean Looper, Amazon Web Services
  • Michael Min, Netflix
  • Michael B. Johnson, Apple
  • Dave Fellows, Microsoft
  • Sean O’Connell, Advanced Micro Devices
  • Mark Visser, Unity Technologies
  • Ken Museth, OpenVDB Representative
  • Michael Dolan, OpenColorIO Representative
  • Cary Phillips, OpenEXR Representative
  • Joshua Minor, OpenTimelineIO Representative
  • Chris Kulla, Open Shading Language Representative

Other Attendees

  • John Mertic, Linux Foundation
  • Emily Olin, Linux Foundation
  • JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
  • Mathieu Mazerolle, Foundry
  • Deke Kincaid, Digital Domain
  • Alex Meddick, Rising Sun Pictures
  • Carol Payne, Netflix, ASWF D&I WG
  • Sergio Rojas, Arena World
  • Rachel Rose, ILM, ASWF D&I WG
  • Scott Wilson, Rust WG
  • Nick Porcino, ILM
  • Jeff Bradley, DreamWorks Animation

Apologies

Agenda

  • General Easy-CLA Upgrade Announcement (John)

    • LF team getting ready for a major upgrade, v1 to v2 in the near future

    • If you are a contributor, should not see any changes

    • If you are one of the managers for the organization (who is granted under the CCLA), there will be a webinar in the next week or 2 outlining the changes, how to use the tool

    • If you see any issues, please let us know / file tickets with LF support

    • Michael: could there be a one CCLA manager for the organization across multiple projects / one for the whole ASWF? John: the issue is more a legal issue since each project is in a different legal entity, and the CLAs have specific language referring to the specific project. Closest we’ve gotten to has been to keep the terms as identical as possible between projects, but difficult to have a single CLA across entities.

    • Michael: if a company has contributors across 3 projects, would be easier if the language was identical, but sounds like the answer is no.

    • John: may be a different question, worth raising with the CCLA team.

    • Daniel: when we have questions about process, is the ticketing system the right way to find the point of contact within LF? John: if there are direct issues with the tools (access, bugs), then ticketing system is the right answer. If it’s more questions about the CLA itself, probably best to reach to John directly.

    • Some projects still working on moving to the 2020 V2.1 CLA

  • Upcoming Events

    • Kimball: thank you Emily for all your work! Emily: I’ve really enjoyed working with ASWF over the last 2 years, proud of what we’ve accomplished. Have been part of many communities, this is one of the most active and engaged. Heading to enterprise tech company, not in the M&E space. Will still be part of some D&I meetings.

    • FMX

      • Thank you for everyone who submitted submissions. Last day is Friday, will be connecting with the FMX people. Jam packed with great content.

    • Open Source Forum

      • John will take the lead to send the invites for that

    • ASWF: Survey results have just been sent

  • Google Summer of Code (Larry)

    • Application deadline coming up

    • Larry: deadline before the next TAC meeting, wanted to share update. OCIO has said they would like to do it, OTIO said no, OSL is going through the motions to see if they have any ideas, haven’t heard from other projects. If we don’t hear from a couple of other projects, then we will likely not make an ASWF application (OCIO could make its own application).

    • Michael: could OCIO do it under the ASWF organization to help with continuity? Larry: seems odd to do it under the organization if only one project is ready to submit under the new task size rules.

    • Michael: just curious, last year there was some language about being a “first time organization”. Larry: could explain that you are part of an org that has done it before.

    • Deadline is the 20th. Kimball: will talk about it in OpenEXR TSC

    • Josh: OTIO had great experience last year, only issue this year is lack of bandwidth. Encourage other projects to do it.

  • Project Updates

  • Technical Project updates

    • OSL

      • Chris: no big updates, move to ASWF GitHub org has gone OK, lots of activity on the GPU front, execution on CPUs.

    • OpenCue

    • OCIO

      • Michael: official announcement of v2 release, getting good feedback, implementation in studios and DCCs

      • UX WG, representatives from studios and users, how can we create a consistent experience for users

      • GSoC: looking for projects that fit the shorter timeframe. Also looking at projects for D&I fellowship. Looking at implementing OCIO in ffmpeg, some updates to ffmpeg may have improved ability to get FP data from buffers. Also a set of OFX OCIO plugins to stand as examples. Larry: could propose to the ffmpeg group and volunteer to help mentor it. Michael: good point. Daniel: great to hear that documentation WG has come full circle. Were discussing the experience of “spinning out” a project WG for documentation. Michael: still on the radar, want to address. Continuing to improve documentation. Daniel: would it be possible to point towards the infrastructure that has been set up? Michael: could do that, have had some contact with other projects that have been referencing it. Kimball: OpenEXR adopting some of those practices, thank you for doing the heavy lifting to organize.

    • OpenEXR

      • Cary: keep inching towards 3.0 release, “dot is and cross ts”, fleshing out details. Waiting for legal approval from one of the contributors, we want to include that change, but their legal dept is moving slowly. No set date yet, but “soon”.

    • OpenVDB

    • OTIO

      • Josh: still working on graduation next steps, some good collaboration with assets WG, some leads on the Blender foundation donating assets

    • RAW2aces

      • Kimball: Emailed to get a TSC started

  • Working Group updates

    • CI

      • Daniel: Working on formalizing the structure of the WG but haven’t finished. CI WG proposal Ongoing work on upgrade for VFX Platform 2021, OpenEXR 3. Practical discussions on how to manage the increasingly constrained Docker images (new policies on Docker Hub), but for internal projects and external users (bandwidth throttling).

      • Also working on Mac builds, especially for the M1 hardware support, should get easier. No strong demand for that yet.

      • Package management: Ryan’s demo from Sony Imageworks, a stream of activity, next meeting from Jeff Bradley at Dreamworks as to their efforts.

    • D&I

      • Carol: just had monthly D&I meeting (12PM Pacific just before TAC).

      • Career in Film Tech webinar series announcement, everyone is encouraged to share with their networks.

      • Accompanied with smaller University led webinars (basics of Open Source contribution), partnering with specific universities. Won’t be as widely advertised. Anyone interested in this accompanying content can reach out.

      • Moving on to scholarship, internship and project ambassador initiatives

    • Python 3

    • USD

      • Cory: great meeting, kicking off new WG to look at web delivery of USD content for visualization, looking at proposal for SIGGRAPH panel

      • Report back from early meetings of USD Camera WG, lots of interest / excitement, no specific output yet.

      • Michael Min: good conversations on USD camera, schemas should be presented at next meeting on Monday

      • Lull in presentation scheduling, trying to get engineers from Pixar to present on how USD is used for Digital Backlot, working on presentation for SIGGRAPH, may happen next week

    • Asset Group

      • Wave: made progress towards clarifying what recommendations to the TAC will be, should finish this at the next meeting. Talked about discussing on Slack, but hasn’t happened so far. Please check out the Wiki that has the notes for the various meetings, as well as the Slack channel.

    • Rust

      • Has there been a proposal? Sean Looper: Rust WG Proposal

      • Rust Slack channel has a lot of activity

      • Goals of the WG are:

        • To collaborate with ASWF communities to create (or facilitate the creation of) C and Rust bindings which are consistent across projects.

        • Create tooling to help build the C and Rust bindings.

        • Define a set of conventions and rules to create a consistent and ergonomic C and Rust interface for the wrapped libraries.

        • To have the Rust bindings easily accessible through Rust’s crates.io repository, and to give ownership of those bindings to the ASWF.

      • Non-goals of the WG are:

        • Re-implementing current C++ libraries in Rust

        • In some cases it may make sense: Imath / half type, but in general no plans to re-implement

      • Deliverables

      • Bind Imath and OpenEXR with C and Rust bindings by SIGRAPH

      • Create a framework for binding the other libraries

      • Kimball: how would these be maintained, in the same repo/ project or separately? How do they get managed? Scott: not sure that we have a clear understanding for that yet, whether the Rust group would manage the bindings themselves, or give the tools to the upstream project to easily manage these bindings. Can work with the project to decide what makes the most sense. Sean: would be concerned (scalability) by an approach where the ownership of the bindings would be centralized.

      • Daniel: in favor, great to see energy and enthusiasm. Sean: very happy with the goals. Kimball: should we bring this to a vote?

      • John: is there a motion? Sean: move a motion, Daniel seconds.

      • Vote: all ayes, no nays or abstain, Rust WG motion passes.

    • What is next for CI?

      • Daniel: makes sense to split out the WG from its direct “under the TAC” (repo) and its charter doc

      • Great to check in with TAc and projects as to agreement with focus, or should CI concentrate in other areas?

      • Some of this could be folded into the charter template

      • Kimball: should it be a formal project or not? Is there any code / scripts? (aswf-docker)

      • Daniel: we have a set of organizations / users at the root owned by the ASWF (systems and artifacts used by the CI system). Kimball: are there recipes that should be published to help people build their own Docker images? Daniel: there’s the aswf-docker repo with the recipes used to generate images.

      • Daniel: making the CI WG a “formal” WG would be a step to make it more visible, including making its own project under the ASWF organization.

      • Daniel: will take this to the next CI meeting, does it make sense to become an actual ASWF project, or stay as a WG

    • Michael Min: Could we perhaps discuss Open Asset Model next TAC meeting, and see if it’s something that might apply to the various working groups? Link?

      • Early discussions about the Open Asset Model from Autodesk, would be great to get some presentation by Autodesk. Number of projects could benefit from their efforts, maybe speak about this at next TAC meeting?

    • Emily: there was a question in the survey results about documentation, but it doesn’t mention which project, so may want to ignore that answer. Should be available later today / tomorrow morning.

  • Next meeting

    • 24 Feb 2021

Action Items (AIs)

Notes

Chat