Blender Foundation joins Khronos Group

The Blender Foundation has joined 3D graphics open standards body Khronos Group.

As an Associate Member, the Foundation will be able to participate in Khronos working groups for open standards used in Blender, like OpenCL and OpenXR, and those it plans to support in future, like Vulkan.

Influence over the development of key graphics standards used in Blender

Khronos Group Associate Membership, which costs $3,500, gives organisations like the Blender Foundation and OctaneRender developer Otoy the right to take part in working groups, albeit without voting rights.

For that, larger developers like Adobe, Autodesk, Epic Games and Unity Technologies, pay $18,000 or $75,000 for Contributor or Promoter membership.

However, membership gives the Foundation direct influence over the development of graphics standards like OpenCL, used in Blender for GPU rendering on AMD cards – and recently radically rebooted.

Khronos Group also oversees developement of OpenXR, recently adopted in Blender as the foundation of its new VR framework, and the real-tinme-graphics-focused Vulkan: a current Blender development project.

Blender Foundation chairman Ton Roosendaal tweeted: “The benefits [of membership] are very practical; Blender uses open standards [and] we now get information early and can help shaping new versions.”

By: Jim Thacker/CG Channle