Academy Software Foundation Adds CIQ, Evercast, and RIT to Roster

CIQ enters the foundation as a Premier Member, while Evercast and the Rochester Institute of Technology join as General and Associate members, respectively. According to executive director David Morin, these partnerships add critical infrastructure expertise and academic pipelines to the community, helping to scale render farms and refine the real-time review tools used by creative teams worldwide.

The timing of the announcement precedes the Open Source Days conference, scheduled for July 19–20 at the J.W. Marriott L.A. Live. Held alongside SIGGRAPH 2026, the event features a keynote by DreamWorks Animation CTO Bill Ballew, who will detail the evolution of the MoonRay renderer. By integrating these new members, the foundation seeks to bridge the gap between technology providers, software vendors, and higher education, ensuring that students and professional engineers alike contribute to projects like OpenColorIO and ACES. Member organizations gain direct access to technical working groups and the ability to influence the long-term direction of the industry's shared software backbone.