A Quarter-Century of Digital Clay

The ZBrush Summit 2025 Virtual Edition runs from 7 to 9 November 2025, celebrating 25 years of ZBrush. Hosted by Maxon, the event streams globally via ZBrush Live, Twitch and YouTube. It marks a dual milestone: a decade of the live Sculpt-Off competition and a quarter-century of the digital sculpting software that reshaped 3D character creation across film, games and design.

The online format, introduced during the pandemic years, remains. No travel, no queues — only three days of streamed presentations, artist showcases and production-level tips.

Friday: Legends Return to the Arena

The Summit opens with the Past Competitors LIVE ZBrush Sculpt-Off. Over fifty artists from the competition’s first decade, including Maarten Verhoeven, Zhelong Xu, Ashley Adams and Christian Carranza, have been invited back for a three-hour speed-sculpt challenge.

That’s followed by the Public LIVE Sculpt-Off, an open competition judged on creativity and execution under time pressure. Both contests reinforce what has become the Summit’s defining spectacle: sculptors creating original work live, in front of a global audience.

Saturday: Practice, Process and Production

Day Two runs from 9:00 to 18:00 PST, starting with Robson Barros from Loot Studios discussing Creating 3D Printable Miniatures That Tell Stories. His live ZBrush demo focuses on scale readability, pose design and physical durability for tabletop models.

Ryan Kingslien, who helped define early ZBrush anatomy training, revisits Beyond Reference, a session on form interpretation and sculptural anatomy. Daniel Hahn (Daytoner) then offers a production-focused look at hard-surface workflows used in toy and concept model creation.

Marko Lazov follows with live creature design improvisation under Turning Chaos Into Creatures. Przemyslaw Malachowski demonstrates Designing Tattoos in 3D, showing how sculpting tools can map artwork precisely to body anatomy.

The evening concludes with WeFX detailing ZBrush use on Wednesday Season 2 for Netflix. Team members Brandon Golding, Carlos Jacinto, Cesar Dacol Jr, Mauro Matheus and Sam Javanrouh break down their creature and prop work before the traditional “Good-Byes” close the stream.

Sunday: Studios, Toys and Technical Futures

The final day begins with Jordi Cerdà Gaya presenting 15 Years Using ZBrush and Crafting 3D Models by Natural Intelligence, a reflection on freelance product modelling and digital craftsmanship.

A highlight session follows from ID Software (Denzil O’Neill, Jason Martin and Solomon Gaitan) showing how ZBrush contributed to asset creation for Doom The Dark Ages.

Matt Hilton from Hasbro takes the stage for Making Joe, revealing the sculpt-to-production process for the G.I. Joe Classified Series. Mitchel Wu then reframes digital sculpting from a photographer’s perspective in The Second Life of a Subtool, tracing the journey from ZBrush mesh to practical miniature sets.

Later segments include Patrick 4D’s short presentation, followed by the Maxon Development Team previewing upcoming features and a 2026 roadmap. Details of these “exciting features” were not yet disclosed at press time.

The Summit concludes with the LIVE Sculpt-Off Winners Announcement, crowning champions from both the public and invitational events before a final farewell.

Looking Back – and Ahead

First released in 1999, ZBrush has become a cornerstone of digital production pipelines and earned a 2014 Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its multi-resolution sculpting system. The 25th anniversary Summit blends that heritage with a forward look. For production artists, the sessions promise practical insights across sculpting, concept art, collectibles, and VFX asset creation.

Maxon – ZBrush Summit 2025 Virtual Edition

The post Sculpt-Offs, Anniversaries & Anatomy: ZBrush Summit 2025 celebrates 25 years first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), long the industry’s preferred standard for end-to-end color management, is officially moving its governance to the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). Announced on August 6, 2025, this transfer marks the end of a decade-plus era where ACES was steered solely by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Instead, ACES will now leverage the ASWF’s open governance, legal framework, and technical community.

Ten Years of Color, Now Open Source

ACES began life more than a decade ago inside the Academy as a response to the growing complexity of digital color workflows in modern filmmaking. Its goal: create a universal system for color management and image interchange that holds up from on-set through visual effects, grading, mastering, and archiving.

Putting the „Ace” in ACES

The recent 2.0 release this past spring brought enhanced color rendering, more consistent displays across different dynamic ranges, improved invertibility for transforms, and broader device support. Still, for all its impact, ACES’ future was tied to the Academy’s stewardship, until now.

ACES 2.0 – available in Mistika!

Why the Switch?

In practical terms, moving to ASWF means ACES will benefit from the same open governance and infrastructure that support other industry-defining open source projects. Expect easier collaboration between ACES and technical mainstays like OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, and MaterialX. This is less about rewriting ACES than about improving how it interacts with the rest of your pipeline.

How to Persuade Competing VFX Studios to Cooperate

ASWF: A Short History and a Growing Roster

The ASWF itself was established in 2018 by the Academy and the Linux Foundation as a home for open source software crucial to visual effects, animation, and postproduction. The list of member organizations reads like a credit roll from a superhero franchise: DreamWorks, Laika, Netflix, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Walt Disney Studios, Weta FX, and Warner Bros., among others. The ASWF has already shepherded open tools from Open Shading Language to OpenVDB, serving both creative and technical teams.

Governance and Next Steps

As with other ASWF projects, ACES will now be overseen by a Technical Steering Committee, composed of long-standing ACES leadership and developers. This committee will steer development, while the Academy remains an active participant. The aim: keep ACES stable, open, and evolving, but without sudden breaks from its established direction.

David Morin, Executive Director of the ASWF, points to the growth in developer participation and cross-industry adoption of ASWF projects as proof that the foundation can provide the community and infrastructure ACES needs for long-term health.

The open libraries of Hollywood

What’s Next for ACES?

Further details on the transition will be given during Open Source Days (August 10-11) at the Marriott Pinnacle in Vancouver, as well as virtually. The schedule includes keynotes, presentations on ACES’ open source innovation, and technical project updates for those who want the inside scoop (and are willing to navigate SIGGRAPH registration).

ACES Remains Industry Standard—But Test First

ACES may be the industry’s open source color management system of record, but—as always—test innovations before deploying them in production. New open source governance should lead to smoother updates, more robust collaboration, and a steadier development pace, but the fundamental rule remains: verify, then trust.

The post ACES Gets a New Home: Academy Hands Off Colour Science to the Academy Software Foundation first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.