Academy Software Foundation Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Meeting - August 5, 2026

Join the meeting at https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/aswf?view=list&projects=aswf

Voting Representative Attendees

Premier Member Representatives

Project Representatives

Carol Payne - OpenColorIO Representative
Cary Phillips - OpenEXR Representative
Chris Kulla - Open Shading Language Representative
Daniel Greenstein - OpenImageIO Representative
Diego Tavares Da Silva - OpenCue Representative
Jonathan Stone - MaterialX Representative
Karen Ruggles - Diversity & Inclusion Working Group Representative
Ken Museth - OpenVDB Representative
Nick Porcino - Universal Scene Description Working Group Representative

Industry Representatives

Jean-Francois Panisset - Visual Effects Society

Non-Voting Attendees

Non-Voting Project and Working Group Representatives

LF Staff

David Morin - Individual - No Account
Emily Olin - Academy Software Foundation
John Mertic - The Linux Foundation
Yarille Ortiz - The Linux Foundation

Other Attendees

Lorna Dumba - Framesore / OpenQMC
Nathan Walster - Framestore / OpenQMC
JT Nelson - Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Randy Packer - Dreamworks / Moonray
Jim Helman - MovieLabs
Olga Avramenko - Sony Imageworks / DNA

Meeting Assets

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Agenda

General Updates
- Vulnerapocalypse #1403
- AGENDA TOPIC: GitHub Security Manager role #1434
Add Guide #1105
Annual Review: USD Working Group #518
Annual Review: OpenQMC #434

Notes

Annual Review: OpenQMC #434
- Josh Bainbridge, Framestore
- Presentation Slides
- OpenQMC
  - A high quality quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) sampling library for film VFX production. QMC is an integral part of rendering and tools, reducing compute to make render times tractable.
  - TSC chair: Josh Bainbridge
  - TSC
    - Josh Bainbridge (FS)
    - Lorna dumba (FS)
    - Nathan Walster (FS)
    - …
- Original Pitch
  - Framestore are committed to continue contributing further improvements from production to this open initiative. We think the project’s mission to standardise such technology across our industry, together…
- Roadmap
  - Goals from last year
    - Join ASWF and stand up governance. Done. TSC formed, community channels running, regular meetings, OpenSSF badge in progress.
    - Lower the barrier to adoption. Mostly done. Simplified build, website and logo shipped. New C-ABI and Python bindings are close but have not landed.
    - Improve CI and QMC methods. Done. Less GHA churn, GPU test running, updated to state-of-the-art techniques.
  - Planned next:
    - Grow contributors, adopters and industry representation on the TSC
    - Provider broader access via C-ABI and Python bindings
    - Achieve the OpenSSF Passing badge
- Contributions
  - Small number of contributors, but very high quality contributions
  - Community implementing new research and providing techniques
  - We also receive a great deal of value in the form of consultation
  - Still need to encourage more contributions from a broader group.
- Orgnisations Contributing / Adopting
  - Netflix
  - Framestore
  - Illumination
  - Epic Games
  - Typhoon
  - NVIDIA
  - Adopted in 4 renderers that we know of + more in progress
- BUild and Project Engineering Matrices
  - Added to build matrix
    - No dependencies beyond C++ 17, so compatible with CY2021 and newer
    - Recently migrated C++14 to C++17, moving the minimum platform up from CY2018
    - Supported on Linux, macOS, and Windows across x86-64, aarch64 and NVIDIA
    - Tested compiler list: clang 6, clang 21, gcc 7.5, msvc 2022, NVCC 11
    - Coming C-ABI binary will only link against libc
  - Added to project engineering contribution matrix
    - Framestore continues to be the primary contributor
    - 80% tactical and 80% strategic
      - No strict timelines on our goals, but would be good to be further ahead on OpenSSF
  - CI / Agentic Coding
    - CI
      - Using Nix for declarative environments to reduce GHA churn
      - We have not regained GPU testing with aswf-docker
    - Agentic Coding
      - User primarily for running benchmarks and POCs
      - Looking to add policy following OIIO’s example
    - Marketing
      - Continuously deploying project website + API reference + test coverage report
      - We have a new logo and artwork (massive thanks to LF art team!)
  - Other Key Achievements
    - Move to C++17 simplified our build system (reducing adopter friction)
    - Close to new C-ABI + broader support for more languages
    - Continuer improvements to underlying techniques
      - Implementation of new research and papers
      - Exploration and discussion of novel techniques
    - Responded to feedback from developers
      - Added workflow around Codespaces
      - Continuously improving documentation
    - Managing issues
      - Flagging Goof First Issues
      - Building our roadmap with GH Projects
  - Incubation Requirements Report Card
    - Technical Governance & Documentation
      - README
      - CODEOWNERS / COMMITTERS
      - RELEASE
      - Mission & Scope
      - Architecture and Features
      - Roadmap
      - OpenSSF badge passing 93%
    - Growth Assessment
      - Contributor / committer / org counts
      - Sustained commit flow
      - Adopters identified
      - Plan to expand committers
      - Plan to reach Graduated Stage
  - Areas the project could use help on
    - Please do get involved!
    - TSC meetings every 3rd Thursday at 4PM UTC
    - Let us know if you are using OpenQMC!
- TAC Open Discussion
  - Ken: can you elaborate on GPU CI? Josh: don’t remember specific GPU we have access to. Used to have a home run server, hardware was too old for current GitHub Actions. Joining ASWF we used their runners, gained back GPU testing. We have a few tools which mimic / mock up an application using OpenQMC, we run on CPU and GPU, output the results, and make sure they are identical across architectures.
  - Carol: great presentation! For fuzzing in OpenSSF badge, it’s not simple. For the TSC rep with security knowledge, that has “wiggle room”. For OCIO, we don’t have that. You could attest that “you take security seriously”, that might be enough? Larry: I agree, I am not an expert on OpenQMC, but it’s just API base, that makes the bar pretty low. You want signed releases and things like that, but even the fuzz testing may be overkill. More important for projects that read data files which may be untrusted. If you are linking against the app and trust the app not to both API calls, you are mostly OK. “Don’t over think it”, seems you are very close for all the requirements we would consider valid to move to incubating. I’ve been watching the project on GitHub, and I’m impressed by how the project is bringing together knowledgeable people in sampling. The sign of a good project. You still have a battle to fight for more contributions, but the advising part is as important as the code writing.
  - Josh: we want to get feedback as to what’s best for moving forward. Do we stay where we are (sandbox) or move to incubation. Carol: incubation can be a misnomer, most of the project in there are well established / mature project, OpenQMC is close to that and we could justify moving you into incubation. You could also wait another 6 months, doesn’t have to wait for another year, its’ not “now or in a year”, you can come back to the TAC in a few months. Josh: great feedback, we will circle back in the TSC.
Annual Review: USD Working Group #518
- Nick Porcino - giving an update, no slides
- Large WG, meeting once or twice a week, either with the full WG (every 2 weeks), or the sub WGs. Around 12 attendees for sub group, couple dozen for full WG.
- Active forum for active USD development. USD proposals, when ready to submit to Pixar, get discussed in WG. A very active pivot from ASWF to larger USD world, which now has manufacturing and others. This group is the best advocate for USD in original context (movie VFX), very appreciated to be hosted here. We take advantage of liaisons with AOUSD.
- We also contact with other groups at less regular pace. We collab with Metaverse standard format for interop, for instance character interop for realtime applications. Also working on a FBX migration plan, no one wants to remain on FBX.
- WGs are assets: camera, assets… These are managed by the community, a leader organizes and runs the meetings. Those are active, and thank the community for keeping those going. About a dozen people working to keep the sub WGs going.
- SIGGRAPH USD in Production Course and Hydra Course organized by ASWF WG members, they are discussed in WG and then in sub WGs. So a “silent” community effort, it’s great to be able to run these courses, run by the community.
- Getting collaboration from GDC and Pipeline Conference, we’ve become aligned, it’s a great amplifier to understand what the external groups are doing.
- Camera WG has great liaison with VES, ASC, SMPTE
- Assets WG has completed their project 1, collaboration with O3DE, they got mascot from O3DE mascot, converted to USD, through summer programs, got people involved into making a short production oriented film, using lots of technology from across the ASWF projects. The project is hosted on our GitHub.
- Maybe in the next project the robot will stand up!
- Recently hosted “Transpiled to WASM” USD Viewer with splat viewing, online conversion through collaboration with Ben Houston to get MaterialX rendering in a fork of 3JS, so quite a complete web viewer for USD files, previewed it at the last WG before SIGGRAPH, and showcased it in various forums at SIGGRAPH. At some point we may want to “hoist” this project to a higher level if it gets community involvement / no longer a single person project.
- Initiatives in WG camera have come to fruition. We now have a backplate schema in USD which stems directly from work in USD WG Camera group several years ago. Can use for machine vision, photogrammetry, as well as VFX tasks. We’ll show the backplates via Hydra. Schema has landed thanks to the group, as well as a focus on enabling physical units throughout the pipeline. Camera group has been working on it for years, but paying off now.
- Assets WG doing important work on conformance and examplar assets. A large comparison matrix to show how different settings result in different products. We see these assets showing in a number of places. The car assets have shown up in Godot test assets. The work has impact. The VFX intent, originally from Animal Logic how they organize their scenes, has become “canonical”. Maya 2027 embeds the ASWF VFX Intent as a preset. Can organize Maya work into USD layers. Pablo Selva drove this work.
- We need proper documentation to happen. We need to move the governance to the Wiki, also follow up on TAC expectations. It needs to be done, not sure what to do about that. It’s a bit more than “pushing a button”, need to follow the OpenEXR examples.
- Not sure how people find the VFX Intent since we don’t do presentations / blog posts.
- Any questions?
  - Carol: very exciting work. Great to hear everything the group is doing, and making great use of the WG format. For the Governance work, the priority would be the charter? Nick: it’s on the Wiki somewhere. Carol: moving this to where the other Long Term WGs are would be the most important, so people can find what the WG(s) are about.
  - Larry: group has its fingers in many pies. Could there be a single landing page that could be the home? Things are spread out, which can make it hard to discover? Nick: Wiki was supposed to be this, but feels antiquated tech, and we haven’t maintained it. Carol: could just redo the wiki? Just need to make sure external links point to the right place on the Wiki. You don’t have to do something than the Wiki? Nick: I’d rather do something pretty like OpenVDB has. Michael: USD WG is one of the larger efforts, trying to keep track and document in the Wiki has proven difficult. When we have recordings of presentations, Alex then has to extract segment to post. To even curating the information is challenging. We can try to help those. Nick: this year, Alex and I went through recordings and made a spreadsheet and made an audit. We had volunteers lined up, but unfortunately no work has been done so far.
  - Larry (chat): Maybe a repo under aswf would be a good central “home”, it can do some things that just a wiki can’t, like have issues, discussions, projects with tracing, etc. Also would make it easy to find for people who are poking around the aswf repos.
  - Nick: people are starting to send AI agents to our groups, we don’t want this in our groups. We’re already created by exemptions of what people can say that violates IP, sometimes people say things they shouldn’t. We also can’t republish. When we arrange for people to speak, they do so under the understanding that they are doing it to the group of people attending. This is why we don’t post raw videos, we edit and get approval. So when people send bots, sometimes anonymous, that’s a problem. Carol: that’s a big issue, saw this myself in another meeting. I don’t have an answer, but will look into it.
  - Nick: I would like the ability to boot attendees (bots) out of the room. Carol: this is great feedback, we will make this work. Nick: I might want to start meetings with a “Don’t record” slide. Carol: we do this at the start of a Board Meeting for instance, it is appropriate. Nick: people should be able to attend a meeting without being recorded. Carol: I’m sure we can do this.
Open Source Days Feedback
- Emily: videos are going up on YouTube soon, they will be going out in groups. BoFs will be as well, a bit raw. Some BoFs have requested not to be published.
- JF: single track on the main day is great, no FOMO.
- Nick: ASWF is a great venue for people to come get the info they need. I was spread thin on SIGGRAPH, I was even scheduled in two places at once. We also ran against sessions we needed to be in. I could have used an additional ASWF day. SIGGRAPH made it hard for people to be where they needed to be. Especially since no recording / proceedings. I might rehost some sessions, but then why am I hosting at SIGGRAPH? Are we graduating to the point that we have sufficient draw that we shouldn’t run on top of SIGGRAPH? Hard to go to courses of papers anymore.
- Michael: so many sessions going on. Maybe we can be proactive in USD group to present first on those topics? Maybe this group should own in, this is a topic of interest to many people in the group. Rather than having it forced upon us by external schedule. Nick: the in person part is important, otherwise we could schedule 3 hours 6 weeks from now to jam on problem solving, but it won’t be in person. Emily: we had a half day on USD in the BoFs, maybe we have a 3rd day that’s USD only, or maybe a second track could be all USD. Nick: it’s such a broad topic, it may be selfish, but it’s an integration platform.
- Carol: we’ve talked about this before. But an extra travel day is an issue. Maybe we should be after SIGGRAPH? Nick: maybe we should talk to SIGGRAPH. Emily: maybe coordinate the types of contents on SIGGRAPH schedule. Maybe at some point we will be large enough to do it completely separately, but for now we are still growing.
- Larry: if we want to be the place where everyone wants to be… Nick: Larry discussed the historic “one topic / one track” nature of SIGGRAPH, you picked your track up front. Maybe SIGGRAPH needs to hear that.
- Emily: provide positive feedback to SIGGRAPH to avoid scheduling conflicts

Next Meeting Agenda

General Updates
- 2026 Security Reviews #1137
Annual Review: OpenImageIO #509
Revamp Annual Review Structure/Template #1336
AGENDA TOPIC ASWF Project Health & Resource Framework #1377
2026 TAC Priorities #1208