The mission of the Academy Software Foundation (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.

Member projects are focused primarily on visual effects and animation production, and include 5 distinct software packages. Student 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 are:

• OpenColorIO : a complete color management solution geared towards motion picture production with an emphasis on visual effects and computer animation.
• OpenCue : a render management / job queuing system.
• OpenEXR : a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format used ubiquitously in visual effects and animation.
• OpenTimelineIO : API and interchange format for editorial timeline information.
• OpenVDB : hierarchical data structure and a suite of tools for the efficient storage and manipulation of sparse volumetric data.