Autodesk has released its Open RV on GitHub, an open source version of its Sci-Tech award-winning media review and playback software. The code will be hosted at the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) as part of Open Review Initiative, which is working to build a unified open source toolset for playback, review and approval of motion picture and related professional media. As part of the open source community, RV will continue to benefit and flourish with both community-driven updates and development efforts by Autodesk engineers.
Autodesk will continue to manage and develop RV for its commercial customers, and it will be an active contributor to Open RV and the Open Review Initiative to support a standardised toolset for native review. This move underscores Autodesk’s belief that open standards and interoperability are essential to the viability and growth of the visual effects, computer graphics and animation industry.
Autodesk media and entertainment SVP Diana Colella said, “In releasing Open RV, we’re bringing the code base from a commercially available product to GitHub, and we hope to do more of this in the future. We’re excited to open source RV to help creative teams get projects reviewed and approved with greater ease, and ultimately reach the final pixel faster and more cost effectively.”
RV is an industry-leading, native review and playback tool used globally by VFX, animation and content creation teams of all sizes. The new open source version of RV allows users and studios to review any media with largely the same features as the commercial version, and customise, modify, and implement new core functionalities tailored to project demands or workflow needs.
Academy Software Foundation Open Review Initiative technical steering committee chair Erik Strauss said, “Autodesk’s generous contribution of Open RV to the ASWF is one of the foundational pillars of the Open Review Initiative, and marks the beginning of a community-led effort to develop an interoperable platform and application suite for media review and approval in the entertainment industry. RV’s long standing position as the de facto reference application for media review, and the vibrant community surrounding it, make Open RV the perfect jumping off point for our initiative’s effort to provide a best in class review and approval ecosystem for developers, studios and artists collaborating on content creation.”
Open RV will be managed by a technical steering committee (TSC) chaired by Autodesk and consisting of engineers and contributors from the community. The project will operate under the oversight of the Open Review Initiative alongside DNEG’s xStudio and Sony Pictures Imageworks’ itview. Software engineers and developers interested in contributing to the project and the community can join the ASWF Open Review Initiative Slack channel and the Open Review Initiative’s mailing list.
Autodesk is a founding member of ASWF, developed by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) and the Linux Foundation in 2018. The ASWF is the motion picture industry’s premier organisation for advancing open source software development across image creation, visual effects, animation, and sound technologies.
Autodesk RV source code, Open RV, is now available to developers and the open source community via the ASWF GitHub. Autodesk will actively participate and monitor community-driven developments in Open RV, with the intention to integrate new functionality into the commercial version of RV, which is still available to customers with ShotGrid subscriptions or perpetual RV licence with active maintenance plans.