MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Imageworks will soon be launching an open source development program.

Imageworks chief technology officer Rob Bredow said that five technologies will be released initially.

Imageworks’ production environment, which is known for its photo-real visual effects, digital character performances, and innovative technologies to facilitate their creation, has incorporated open source solutions, most notably the Linux operating system, for many years. Now the company is contributing back to the open source community by making these technologies available. The software can be used freely around the world by both large and small studios. Each project has a team of passionate individuals supporting it who are interested in seeing the code widely used. The intention of the open source release is to build larger communities to adopt and further refine the code.

"Some of the smartest and most dedicated engineers in computer graphics have put their experience and passion into the development of these tools and we are very excited to be able to share them with a much wider audience," said Bredow,

To launch these open source technologies, Imageworks engineers will be at SIGGRAPH, the international conference of computer graphics held this year in New Orleans from 3 – 8 August. Imageworks is also launching a website to keep the developer community updated on its open source projects at http://opensource.imageworks.com.