SAN FRANCISCO, July 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Linux
Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation
through open source, today announced an intent to form the Open 3D
Foundation to accelerate developer collaboration on 3D game
and simulation technology. The Open 3D Foundation will support open
source projects that advance capabilities related to 3D graphics,
rendering, authoring, and development. As the first project
governed by the new foundation, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is
contributing an updated version of the Amazon Lumberyard game
engine as the Open 3D Engine (O3DE), under the permissive Apache
2.0 license. The Open 3D Engine enables developers and content
creators to build 3D experiences unencumbered by commercial terms
and will provide the support and infrastructure of an open source
community through forums, code repositories, and developer events.
A developer preview of O3DE is available on GitHub today. For
more information and/or to contribute, please visit:
https://o3de.org
3D engines are used to create a range of virtual experiences,
including games and simulations, by providing capabilities such as
3D rendering, content authoring tools, animation, physics systems,
and asset processing. Many developers are seeking ways to build
their intellectual property on top of an open source engine where
the roadmap is highly visible, openly governed, and collaborative
to the community as a whole. More developers look to be able to
create or augment their current technological foundations with
highly collaborative solutions that can be used in any development
environment. O3DE introduces a new ecosystem for developers and
content creators to innovate, build, share, and distribute
immersive 3D worlds that will inspire their users with rich
experiences that bring the imaginations of their creators to
life.
Major features of the Open 3D Engine include a new
multi-threaded photorealistic renderer, an extensible 3D content
editor, a data-driven character animation system, and a node-based
visual scripting tool. Developers can build games and new engine
features on top of O3DE's component-based architecture, which
enables components of the engine to be used together or
independently. Developers will have the flexibility of authoring
code with C++, LUA, and python, while animators, technical artists,
level designers, and other content creators can work directly with
O3DE's built-in authoring tools to create 3D experiences.
The Open 3D Foundation and Open 3D Engine Project will enable
developers to collaborate on building games and simulations as well
as the underlying engine. It includes a Governing Board focused on
business and budget decisions and a Technical Steering Committee
dedicated to technical strategy and community management. The
Project is organized into Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that
include: Build/Dev Pipeline; Simulation Engine; Content Creation;
Network & Cloud; Presentation; Documentation/Demo; Release;
Security; and Testing. The O3DE community welcomes contributions
from all cloud providers, gaming companies, and industries to
advance the project.
"We're proud to offer the 3D development community an
unencumbered, AAA-capable, real-time 3D engine with one of the
broadest arrays of integrated 3D authoring tools in the industry
including a new photorealistic renderer, built for both modern
gaming hardware and distributed cloud rendering," said Bill Vass, VP of Engineering at AWS. "We believe
that creating a first-class, community-driven, open-source option
will revolutionize real-time 3D development, as Linux did for
operating systems and Apache did for the web."
"The new Open 3D Foundation finally gives gaming and engine
developers an opportunity to influence the direction of a major AAA
class 3D engine that is sustained for the long term by a worldwide
open source community," said Chris
Aniszczyk, CTO, Linux Foundation. "Furthermore, other
industries such as automotive and healthcare can take advantage of
embedding the engine and supporting the advancement of the engine
to benefit all."
Founding members of the Open 3D Foundation include AccelByte,
Adobe, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, AWS, Backtrace.io,
Carbonated, Futurewei, GAMEPOCH, Genvid Technologies, Hadean, HERE
Technologies, Huawei, Intel, International Game Developers
Association, KitBash3D, Kythera AI, Niantic, Open Robotics,
PopcornFX, Red Hat, Rochester Institute of
Technology, SideFX, Tafi, TLM Partners and Wargaming. These
members are contributing funding and resources to the foundation as
the initial governing members.
The O3DE community is hosting O3DECon on October 12th and invites the wider open source
engine community to attend, contribute and learn more about the
future of the foundation. Additionally, there will be an O3DE panel
at GDC on July 22, 2021.
Member Comments
AccelByte
"As a Founding member we are incredibly excited to be part of that
push towards a more open, and frankly, industry rejuvenating
breakthrough. Open source 3D game engine gives total control, and
puts creators back in the driving seat. It will accelerate
innovation and foster amazing content and experience creation. At
AccelByte we are committed to the deep integration of our tools and
backend platform tech to support content creators using O3DE.
We are looking forward to working with the Linux Foundation to make
this a reality." - - Nik Palmer,
Product Manager of AccelByte Blackbox.
Adobe
"Adobe is proud to champion the Open 3D Foundation as a founding
member. Open source technologies are critical to advance
sustainability across 3D industries and beyond. We believe
collaborative and agnostic toolsets are the key to not only more
healthy and innovative ecosystems but also to furthering the
democratization of 3D on a global scale." - - said Sebastien Deguy,
VP of 3D & Immersive at Adobe.
Apocalypse Studios
"The new Open 3D Foundation ushers in a profound change in the
video game industry," said Denis
Dyack, CEO of Apocalypse Studios Inc. "O3DE will lead the
way for cloud-first development, freeing developers to collaborate
without traditional restrictions allowing them to concentrate on
creativity, achieving what was once previously impossible. The
video game industry will never be the same again."
Audiokinetic
"We're very excited about offering an integration of Wwise to O3DE
users. We believe it is our duty as the global leader in
interactive audio solutions to make our cross-platform technology
as accessible as possible," said Martin
Dufour, Audiokinetic CTO. "While we think this is essential
for continuing our contributions towards advancements within the
gaming and interactive media industry, we also believe that
strengthening and empowering the creators community with open
source solutions will allow other industries to leverage
interactivity as it expands beyond games."
Backtrace
"The formation of the Open 3D Foundation is a transformative step
in accelerating the real-time 3D market through open-source. It
feeds into the market trends of game technology democratization,
cloud-first game development, and the evolution of multi-faced game
development platforms to the benefit of both creators and the
ecosystem as a whole. Backtrace is honored to join as a founding
member of the Open 3D Foundation and eager to empower O3DE creators
with our cross-platform observability solution for real-time 3D,"
said Abel Mathew, CEO and co-founder
of Backtrace I/O.
Carbonated
"As a mobile-first studio, we're honored and excited to be a
founding member of the Open 3D Foundation," said Travis Boatman, CEO of Carbonated Inc. "Our
titles must perform on a myriad of devices, and tap into
cloud-enabled services in order to drive forever games for our
players. We chose O3DE as foundational tech because it
delivers on all of our needs while being completely free and open
source."
Futurewei
"The open sourcing, with the Linux Foundation of this important
platform for game development is a big step for spatial computing
and I'm very excited to see where it leads!" said Tish Shute (Leichliter), Futurewei Technologies,
Inc.
GAMEPOCH
"Successful implementation of cloud-native games requires not only
a fundamental shift in design paradigm but equally important is the
availability of enabling technologies. The O3DE initiative is an
important catalyst for empowering creators in the new era of
cloud-native gaming," said Stephanie
Chen, Founder & CEO, GAMEPOCH.
Genvid Technologies
"Creators and businesses both benefit when there are open source
tools available to them. We are big believers that game engines and
interactive streaming will change not just video games but
entertainment in general, and think that the mission of the Open 3D
Foundation is important not just to our industry (gaming) but our
metaverse future. We are honored to join as a founding member of
the Open 3D Foundation and are eager to bring our cross-platform
interactive streaming services to its developers," said Jacob
Navok, co-founder and CEO of Genvid Technologies, Inc.
Hadean
"The release of a fully open source AAA-quality game engine has the
potential to significantly reshape the games industry and Hadean is
thrilled to be able to support it. We are particularly excited by
the modularity goals of O3DE and the potential for integration with
our highly scalable distributed simulation engine, in pursuit of a
more open ecosystem for gaming and simulation," said Aidan Hobson-Sayers, technical director,
Hadean.
HERE Technologies
"As a location platform at the forefront of mapping the world's
road networks and urban centers in 3D, we are excited to join the
Open 3D Foundation as a founding member," said Giovanni Lanfranchi, Senior Vice President
Development and Chief Technology Officer at HERE Technologies. "We
intend to contribute to the 3D engine code as well as provide
expertise that can help developers create 3D-rich location-based
experiences for gaming and a broad array of enterprise and mobility
use cases."
Huawei
"We are thrilled to support and participate in the formation of the
Open 3D Foundation as a Premier Member," said Bryan Che, Chief Strategy Officer, Huawei Technologies. "3D graphics are vital to
how we connect billions of people around the world, including in
our mobile devices, laptops, AR/VR systems, and smart screens;
cloud-based gaming and media services; and more. Bringing the power
of open source across all these areas and beyond will greatly
enhance the innovation and value of 3D visuals.
IGDA
"We are proud to be supporting the O3DE project and the
democratization of game development technology through open source.
It is our mission to support and empower game developers in
achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers, and access to
cutting-edge development tools and their source code will enable
more studios and developers to thrive. We are sure to see the O3DE
project and Open 3D Foundation lead to new innovation within our
industry and improve video games and other 3D experiences for
everyone," said Renee Gittins,
executive director, International Game Developers
Association.
Intel
"Intel is excited and honored to join with AWS, the Linux
Foundation and other industry partners to form the Open 3D Engine
Foundation. We know well through the variety of Linux Foundation
projects we already support that open software is a major driver of
innovation. Such projects as O3DE enable the collective energy and
mind-power of the best developers in the world to deliver robust,
stable and next generation technology to everyone sooner. We are
delighted to contribute a wide array of Intel's advanced
photorealistic and high-performance visual technology, including
Intel® OSPRay and other components in the Intel® oneAPI Rendering
Toolkit, for the best 3D visual impact to a wide array of
applications," said Jim Jeffers,
senior principal engineer and senior director of Intel Advanced
Rendering and Visualization Architecture.
KitBash3D
"As creators begin to check out the O3DE, it's important that they
can quickly build a world and get excited about using the engine.
To help them reach this magic moment, we're providing a sampling of
the KitBash3D premium asset library to come FREE within the O3DE –
giving users the tools they need to create worlds and save
countless hours of work in the process. We are very happy to be a
part of this project's launch and can't wait to see all the amazing
things creators make with it!" -- Banks Boutté, Co-founder,
KitBash3D
Kythera AI
"The O3DE Project is a game changer," said Matthew Jack, CEO of Kythera AI, an established
supplier of the industry's most comprehensive AI middleware. "It's
a big step in the democratization and accessibility of game
development, with users gaining access to cutting-edge tools
previously affordable only to AAA studios. As a founding member of
O3DE we have chosen to make the power of Kythera AI available to
all as an Open3D Gem. Developers will save thousands of hours and
achieve sophisticated, dynamic behaviors for any genre, out of the
box, and at scale. As a result, users of O3DE can deliver an
unrivalled experience to players - and fill their stunning worlds
with intelligent life!"
Niantic
"Niantic's mission is to encourage exploring and togetherness,
which is why our Real World Platform offers cross-platform APIs and
tools that simplify the development of AR applications for mobile
devices," said Phil Keslin, CTO,
Niantic. "Being a founding member of the exciting Open 3D
Foundation follows that spirit of openness and togetherness. Open
standards help democratize innovation, which is why we support
arming developers with a fully open source cross-platform 3D
engine, as it will remove major hurdle to creativity and will help
their focus on AR world building. We're honored to be able to
provide developers with this framework to deliver amazing, shared
AR experiences through the conduit of our real-world AR mobile
games."
Open Robotics
We are happy to support the Open 3D Foundation's goal of providing
a high-quality open source 3D engine and we are honored to be a
founding member. Given our history with open source software for
the robotics industry, we are intimately familiar with the power of
collaboration and community. We look forward to O3DE helping to
grow this initiative and to one day bring these capabilities to
robotics simulation," said Brian
Gerkey, CEO, Open Robotics.
PopcornFX
"We believe in collaboration and sharing across industries. By
gathering ambitious individuals and organizations from multiple
industries, O3DE is a path to a bright future. As founder members
of O3DF, we will bring PopcornFX GeM and our ability to work
closely with production teams. With partners and community, our
offer and capabilities will continue to improve in order to bring
cutting edge solutions for realtime VFX," said Maxime Dumas, owner, PopcornFX.
Red Hat
"As a leader in open source solutions, Red Hat knows how
instrumental open source communities can be in creating innovative
solutions to the pressing needs and challenges of various
industries. We're honored to be a founding member of the Open 3D
Foundation, an initiative that will empower developers to
collaborate and thereby shape the future of 3D visual experiences,"
said Deborah Bryant, Senior
Director, Open Source Program Office.
Rochester Institute of Technology
(RIT)
"Since I teach courses in Game Design and Development and in our
Minor in Free and One Source Software and Free Culture, this checks
all the boxes for bringing more enterprise open source
collaboration to the gaming industry," said Stephen Jacobs, Director, Rochester Institute of Technology's Open Programs
Office, Open@RIT. "This will be a great opportunity for RIT
students, faculty and staff to make contributions to the engine
and, as we're part of the Foundation, to engage at a level that
actually helps shape its direction. This is especially
important for our students to work with the professionals in the
field. Students in the Open Source course I'm teaching this
semester will have the option to work with the foundation for their
required FOSS contributions."
SideFX
"Empowering artists with tools they need to create immersive
virtual worlds is at the heart of everything we do at SideFX. So
we're thrilled to be a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation.
We truly believe that open, collaboraitve workflows are the future
of 3D – and we're proud to be a part of this important initiative
driving into that future," said Cristin Barghiel, VP of product
development at SideFX.
Tafi
"At Tafi, our vision is to empower creators and democratize 3D
avatar solutions across the virtual worlds. As such, the Open 3D
Engine project aligns perfectly with our shared belief in open
collaboration and mass innovation," said Preston Woo, Chief Strategy Officer, Tafi. "We
are proud to be a founding member of the O3DF in partnership with
Amazon, the Linux Foundation, and other industry leaders, and we
look forward to supporting the development of this new open source
3D engine."
TLM Partners
"The O3DE project opens the door to a AAA engine for indies and
underserved markets. We see room in the market for a third engine
that is a transformative step towards collaboration and will drive
exponential creativity and growth," said Jake Hawley, founder and CEO of TLM Partners.
"As a publisher of Cross-Play games, TLM is excited to support the
development of a cloud connected, cross-platform and open source
engine that aligns with our belief that the future of game
development is predicated on pioneering tools and technology that
facilitate creative and collaborative expression without the need
for a physical space."
Wargaming
"We at FragLab believe that having a game engine with quality
rendering is not enough. Nowadays the more technical side of game
development is quickly changing and the ability to adapt your
solutions in real-time is extremely important. O3DE has a proven
foundation to be not only a high-quality game engine, but also be
flexible enough to quickly react to different users' demands,
starting from integrating 3rd party AI systems to new
game servers' orchestration backend technologies," said
Sergey Rustamov, technical director
at Wargaming.
About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux
Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the
world's leading home for collaboration on open source software,
open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation's
projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including
Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation's
methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the
needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create
sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information,
please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been
continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud
workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for
compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine
learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things
(IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR
and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and
management from 81 Availability Zones (AZs) within 25 geographic
regions, with announced plans for 21 more Availability Zones and
seven more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, and Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of
customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest
enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power
their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn
more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks
and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux
Foundation, please see its trademark usage page:
www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a
registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer for Linux
Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com
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