VFX Reference Platform is a set of tool and library versions to be used as a common target platform for building software for the VFX and Animation industry.

Security best practices is a guide for studios to hand out to artists.

The VES Transfer Specifications document provides a reference template that can be used to effectively define how visual effects vendors should ingest, process and deliver image data to production side visual effects departments.

The VES Technology Committee conducted a wide Industry survey on the platforms used in VFX and Animation Studios, following some impactful industry changes highlighted in the Siggraph 2021 VFX Reference Platform Birds-of-a-feather. The Studio Platform Survey Report highlights the results of what is possibly the widest industry survey of its kind.

The Virtual Production Glossary aims to help practitioners across all fields of production decipher the terminology used in Virtual Production. As such it is an industry effort, encouraged and fostered (rather than owned) by the Technology committee.

The VES Emerging Technology Award recognizes the individual creators behind a new, innovative technology that has had a substantial and impactful first use in a visual effects, gaming, or animation project. This award celebrates the primary technology contributors—such as developers, software engineers, and R&D technical directors. The award’s creation and nomination process are led by the VES Technology Committee.

The first three winners of the VES Emerging Technology Award:

• 2025 (23rd Annual VES Awards): Here: Neural Performance Toolset
• 2024 (22nd Annual VES Awards): The Flash: Volumetric Capture
• 2023 (21st Annual VES Awards): Avatar: The Way of Water: Water Toolset

The GenAI working group has developed a number of webinars:

• Real Applications of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Visual Effects
• Generative Artificial Intelligence in VFX Software: Now and In the Future
• How Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Might Affect Visual Effects Now and In the Future

(see https://www.vesglobal.org/gen-ai-resources-page/ for more)

The guide VES Career Opportunity Guide  was primarily developed by the Education & Outreach committee, we were happy to contribute to the XR and Immersive entertainment sections.

We have also worked with the Education & Outreach committee to create a webinar on Immersive media. (TODO Update with link to video, this should be released after Sept 30th.).

• NextGen Codecs for VFX – A white paper reviewing what open-source codecs are available for VFX Review workflows.
• On-Set VFX Data Collection and Usage Guide – A Guide to the types of data that might be found on-set, who creates the data and who consumes the data.
• Open Source License Guidance – provide simple insight, in layman’s terms, as to the considerations involved in either choosing an OSS license for a new OSS project, or using an OSS project, within the context of typical Animation and VFX-related software development.

Cinematic Color is an introduction to the color pipelines behind modern feature film visual effects and animation.

The VES camera reports is a standardized exchange format to aid with ingesting camera report data into studio pipelines. It also provides a reference implementation using Filemaker.

The Technology Committee created a spreadsheet to track Python 3 adoption by commonly used industry packages. The community built on this effort to create VfxPy a much more elegant visualization of the data.

Covid-19 Best Practices document collects advice from members of the VES Technology committee and members of the community sharing solutions to common problems we encountered as we transferred to work from home workflows that are for security and technical reasons difficult in our industry.