Asset Repository WG kickoff

Attendees

• John Mertic (Linux Foundation)
• Cary Phillips (ILM, OpenEXR, Sci-tech council)
• Darin Grant (Animal Logic, ASWF Treasurer)
• David Morin (Epic / ASWF Exec Director)
• Eric Enderton (NVIDIA, DigiPro)
• Joshua Minor (OTIO / Pixar)
• Nick Porcino (OTIO, OpenEXR / Pixar)
• Sean McDuffee (Intel)
• Will Telford (ADSK)
• Eric Bourque (ADSK)
• Orde Stevanoski (Imageworks)
• Lee Kerley (Imageworks)
• Daniel Heckenberg (Animal Logic)
• Bruno Sargeant (Unity Technologies Inc - M&E PM)
• JT Nelson (Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group)
• Roman Zulak (Imageworks)
• Michael B Johnson (Apple)
• Rob Bredow (ILM, ASWF Chair)

Agenda

• Welcome/Intros
• Discuss purpose of this working group and background
• Select WG leader(s)
• Align on proposal ( template at https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/tac/blob/master/process/wg_readme_template.md )
• Next steps and meeting cadence.

Meeting Notes

Intros - some concerns:

• OpenEXR images repo = an example of best practices
• Testing / conformance
• mentoring / canonical references
• Individual assets
• Scene structure (USD?)
• portability of assets
• repurposing for multiple markets / applications
• film production quality e.g. Moana Island
• research; help make research applicable for real world problems
• no one at studio says no - but no one is authorized / motivated to say yes

Slides from Governing Board 09/22/20

• Asset repo voted number one idea for ASWF “what else”
• Community is open to assets for testing only as well as for production use
• 3D, 2D, and ML were the top three asset repository types requested
• License examples:
• Smithsonian Open Access (view only but CCO)
• Data.world (data science data sets)
• ASWF logos 
• Research oriented:  https://developer.nvidia.com/orca ; 
https://casual-effects.com/data/ .
• These datasets are static (no animation, rigs etc)
• http://videomatting.com/ 
• Licenses: Unmodified licenses are easier. As few as possible … ideally 2.
• Quality levels: Could have badging / tagging (Testing Only, Stress Test, Production Asset, etc).  Production cruftiness; clean and portable; reference asset
• Taxonomy badges (Material, mesh, image, etc)

Goals and Non Goals

• Scope: Small set of exemplars.  Quality over quantity.
• One asset per ASWF project?  A good place to start, but leaves out many other purposes.
• Describe the MVP Minimum Viable Product.
• Could pick a Blender film as a starting point, and ask each project, does this work for you? Draw out specific lacking features, scale, etc. 
• Are there enough AOVs to make them interesting OpenEXR files?
• Modernize OpenEXR Image lib. Have cameras, but what is most needed? Best to have specific demand.
• Stress cases - abusing the format - can come from production or from project.
• Level of goals: rather than “these exact outcomes”, look for value we want to deliver: “serve needs of our projects” or etc.
• To turn “maybes” to “yeses” for studio participation: Establish selfish goals.  Such as help this ASWF project you use.
• These could be on-boarding / mentoring / diversity projects.
• Students could be a great help. Under the direction of an experienced studio person.
• ASWF uniquely positioned to raise ideas in research community:  identify important new use cases, etc.
• Remove licensing hurdle, hosting hurdle.  Make it viable for a studio to donate.
• Identify or develop assets. But also maintain over time.
• A snapshot in time is easier than maintaining over time. Keep it easy. 
• PRMan tests vs USD backlot:  Freezing assets for testing over time versus updating formats to reflect current best-practice.
• ABC and PBR shaders → Python script → USD files.  Wave changes the script periodically; source material constant, USD format evolves.

Next Steps and Meeting Cadence

• Michael B Johnson steps forward to chair - Thank you!
• Meetings @ 2 weeks, same time slot.
• Homework: Look around your company for potential assets, let’s pool the list, see what’s rare or missing, etc.
• Working Group mission right now: Create proposal(s), what should ASWF be doing about assets. We can boil the ocean later. :-)