Ayon has been in existence for quite some time, albeit under different names. Its codebase originated as Pype, an in-house production platform for a Czech creative studio. The company created for its development and promotion was initially called Pype.Club, underwent a rebranding, becoming Ynput, and the platform changed its name to OpenPype, and then finally to Ayon. It has been utilized by various small and medium-sized studios, including Dazzle Pictures and Method n Madness, which used it in the promo for Ed Sheeran's "2 Step." Other studios like Colorbleed and Moonshine Animation have also contributed to its codebase.

Ayon consolidates existing studio production tools into a unified pipeline. Through a web panel, users can track assigned artists, versioning and approval of frames, as well as monitor the overall project progress. It integrates with major CG applications, including 3D content creation tools like 3ds Max, Blender, Houdini, Maya, and Substance 3D products, compositing and editing tools like After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, and Nuke, and 2D animation programs such as Toon Boom Harmony and TVPaint. For production tracking, Ayon integrates with ftrack Studio, ShotGrid, and Kitsu.

It adheres to the VFX Reference Platform specification, supports new standards such as OpenTimelineIO, and accommodates workflows based on USD and real-time rendering in Unreal Engine.

The Ayon platform is designed for "out-of-the-box" use, and Ayon Pipeline releases provide pre-configured pipelines for 2D animation, 3D animation, or VFX projects. Studios with dedicated technical staff can customize the platform via a RESTful API, which supports Python and GraphQL. The Ayon platform itself is free to install, and its source code is available online. Ynput earns revenue through services and paid add-ons.

Although Ayon has been openly accessible for almost a year, Ayon 1.0 marks the first official release ready for full-scale use. In addition to emerging from beta, this release is the first available through Ynput Cloud, a new cloud hosting platform by Ynput designed for studios aiming to avoid the complexities of managing their own hardware infrastructure. Unlike local installations, this is a paid service available on a quarterly or annual subscription basis.

Ayon 1.0 can be deployed on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Detailed system requirements can be found here. The source code is available under the Apache 2.0 open-source license. The Cloud Starter subscription costs 1,080 euros/quarter or 3,480 euros/year, supporting 10 active users; the Cloud Pro subscription costs 3,330 euros/quarter or 10,680 euros/year, supporting 20 active users.