AYON: 2025 Year in Review

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AYON: 2025 Year in Review

A Journey of Growth, Community, and Connection

:two: :zero: :two: :five: year was full of a lot challenges, achievements and great updates to our product AYON :tada:

:sparkles: To Our Incredible Community

As 2025 comes to a close, we want to take a moment to celebrate the most important part of AYON: You. Whether you’ve been with us since the early days of OpenPype or joined the Ynput family this year, your support, feedback, and passion for open-source pipeline tools are what keep us moving.

This year wasn’t just about code; it was about consolidating and extending ecosystem for studios worldwide. Thank you for being part of the journey :green_heart: .

:house: New Office, New Home for AYON

We’ve moved! Our new office is now located in the heart of Prague on Štěpánská. Whether you’re exploring the city’s history or visiting the National Museum, we are just a few minutes’ walk away. Drop by and say hello!

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:rocket: AYON Product Updates

:compass: Roadmap, Feedback & Documentation

We have launched a new portal to make our progress transparent and ensure your voice is heard.

  • Feedback Portal: The new hub for requesting features and reporting issues.
  • AYON Roadmap: A public look at what we’re building next, from the AYON Server to pipeline and production tools.
  • Server Changelog: Stay up to date with the latest server releases.
  • Help Center: Our revamped user and admin documentation site, now featuring an AI Help Bot to answer your questions and provide guidance.

:open_book: Read more: Introducing AYON’s Public Feedback and Roadmap Pages

:zap: AYON Server

The AYON Server evolved significantly this year, moving from 1.6.1 to 1.13.6. This journey also marked a major milestone in our commitment to sustainability with the adoption of the Fair Source License.

Key Server Highlights:

  • Project Overview (1.8.0): Manage all project folders and tasks in a single, high-performance view. | More info
  • Interactive Web Actions (1.8.3): Enable developers to build interactive web actions that support custom forms and direct user input within the browser.
  • Lists (1.9.0): Organize collections of folders, tasks, and versions from across the project. | More info
  • Reviewables Web Player (1.10.1): Review instantly with a native in-browser player; just hit Spacebar on any version or thumbnail.
  • Pipeline-Free Uploads (1.9.2): Create and upload versions directly to the server without needing a full pipeline setup. | More info
  • Project Bundles (1.12.1): Assign specific bundles on a per-project basis for ultimate environment flexibility. | More info
  • Products Page (1.13.1): Track published product versions, monitor statuses, and communicate directly through comments on specific versions. | More info
  • Shareable Entity Links (1.13.3): Quickly copy and paste direct links to entities or comments for better team collaboration.

:hammer_and_wrench: Pipeline

On the pipeline side, we now support over 30 DCC integration addons, so listing every update here isn’t feasible. Instead, let’s explore the key highlights from our core pipeline functionality and the Core Addon, which evolved significantly from version 1.0.13 to 1.7.0.

New Features, Concepts & Tools:

  • Process Monitor (Applications 1.2.3): A new tool to track the status and logs of any application launched via the AYON Launcher. | More info
  • Launcher Web Actions (Core 1.4.0): The Launcher now utilizes web actions for a more consistent interaction with AYON. Applications are launched in separate processes that can be triggered directly from either the Launcher or the AYON Server.
  • Representation Traits (Core 1.4.0): Inspired by OpenAssetIO, we’ve introduced “Traits”, a step toward standardizing representation data across the entire pipeline. | Technical Details
  • Product Base Types (Core 1.4.0 / 1.7.0): A major step toward Product Aliases, allowing for more flexible naming conventions and organization.
  • Extra Review Channels (Core 1.6.8): You can now transcode and publish additional channels beyond the beauty pass, perfect for publishing textures or specific AOVs as AYON-reviewable versions. | Technical Details
  • Fill Gaps in Extract Review (Core 1.3.0): Artists can now specify how to handle missing frames during review extraction. This is particularly useful when publishing renders with frame steps locally or via Deadline. | More information here and here
  • Project Bundles (Core 1.6.0): Full pipeline-side support for project-specific bundles, ensuring the correct environment is loaded for every project.
  • Launcher Workfile View (Core 1.6.2): The Launcher UI now displays registered workfiles, allowing users to launch specific workfile versions directly.
  • Workfiles API (Core 1.5.0): A dedicated Workfiles API, empowering developers to build powerful pipeline automations and custom tools.

Enhanced USD Contribution Workflow:

  • Core 1.1.2: Introduced contribution profiles to provide better default values for artists.
  • Core 1.7.0: Admins can now define which department layers belong to specific target scopes (e.g., Asset vs. Shot).

Testing & Stability:
To ensure production-grade stability, we introduced pytest-ayon for fixture-based testing and significantly expanded our ayon-pipeline-tests suite.

:gift: New Addons

We introduced a wave of new addons this year to expand our ecosystem and address common studio challenges.

Production Tracking & Project Management:

  • Reports: Visualize project data and generate detailed reports.
  • Review Session: Extends AYON Server’s review capabilities with annotations, version comparisons, shared sync sessions, and Guest Review.
  • Planner: A high-level production planning tool used to map out project phases, reserve time for milestones, and manage studio-wide availability in a calendar-style view.
  • Power Pack: A suite of advanced features for Pro and Studio AYON subscriptions. It includes tools like the Multi-view Slicer, Comment Categories, Calculated Attributes, and access to all pipeline releases.
  • Project Archival Tool: Optimize your storage by archiving or deleting project files from work and publish directories.

Third-Party Platform Connections:

  • Airtable: Connects AYON to Airtable for cloud-based collaboration and metadata management (Documentation is currently in progress).

Pipeline:

  • Batch Delivery: Automates the creation of deliverables with flexible transcoding options.
  • Batch Ingest: Streamlines the process of bringing large sets of external data into the pipeline.
  • Premium Burnins: Provides advanced, customizable burnin functionality for reviewables.
  • Slater: Create and manage slates via a dedicated editor with support for reusable presets.

New DCC Integrations:

AYON Out and About: Events

Almost YnSummit 25

Due to various challenges, we unfortunately had to cancel the official YnSummit 2025. However, the community spirit remained strong, and we gathered for a smaller, informal meetup.

:date: Save the Date: We are already looking forward to the next year! YnSummit 26 is planned for May 28–29, 2026. Stay tuned for the official announcement and location details!

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FMX

FMX was a massive highlight this year. We hosted a full day of pipeline sessions, featuring talks that covered a wide range of topics, including “AYON Adoption with No Pipeline TDs” and “AYON USD Workflows.”

:point_right: Watch the full playlist: AYON Workshops at FMX 2025

A huge thank you to @milan @murphy @jakub.jezek @BigRoy @janjinda @VertexApe @doerp @robert for their incredible efforts in presenting these workshops.

That’s @robert in the photo below :tada: presenting How Planet X Adopted AYON with No Pipeline TDs | FMX 2025

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MIFA Annecy

It was a pleasure meeting so many creatives at Annecy and showcasing the latest AYON features. The energy at MIFA is always inspiring!

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Siggraph

SIGGRAPH remains the premier destination for meeting the amazing people driving our industry forward. We participated in Birds of a Feather sessions and Open Source Days, connecting with pipeline TDs from around the globe.

(And yes, we managed to snag a lovely RenderMan teapot along the way!)

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Get Splashed

AYON was a proud sponsor of this community gathering in Prague, celebrating the incredible VFX and games talent in Czechia.

:open_book: Read more: AYON Sponsors Get Splashed 2025 Event

State of Pipeline

We released the combined results of our 2023 and 2024 survey, featuring insights from over 300 studios. If you want to see where the industry is heading, from USD adoption to AI integration. check out the full report:

Wishing You a Great 2026

It’s been a year of challenges and incredible achievements. We are so proud of what the AYON ecosystem has become, and we are aspiring to even greater milestones in the year ahead.

Happy New Year from everyone at Ynput! :fireworks:

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