LOS ANGELES, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
today announced that 21 scientific and technical achievements
represented by 58 individual award recipients will be honored at its
annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation on
Saturday, February 7, at the
Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills.
In addition, veteran sound engineer and Dolby® Laboratories
executive David W. Gray will receive the Gordon E. Sawyer Award (an
Oscar® statuette), presented “to an individual in the motion picture
industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the
industry.” Gray’s career has encompassed the design, refinement and
implementation of groundbreaking cinema sound technologies, including
stereo optical soundtracks, digital sound on film and most recently,
Dolby Atmos®. He has served for many years on the Academy’s Science
and Technology Council and its Theater Standards Committee, among
others, as well as chaired the audio study group of SMPTE’s pioneering
DC28 technology committee, from which the first two SMPTE Digital Cinema
standards were published.
“Our honorees represent an enormous range of technologies, from
camera rigs to software systems, with names as colorful as ‘Biscuit
Jr.,’ ‘Barbershop’ and ‘PhysBAM,’” said Richard Edlund, Academy
Award®-winning visual effects artist and
chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee. “They exemplify
the phenomenal creativity of professionals in the scientific and
technical community, and the invaluable contributions they make to what
is arguably the most creative industry in the world.”
Unlike other Academy Awards to be presented this year,
achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have
been developed and introduced during 2014. Rather, the achievements must
demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the
process of making motion
pictures.
The Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements are:
TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS (ACADEMY CERTIFICATES)
To
Peter Braun for the concept and development
of the MAT-Towercam Twin Peek, a portable, remote-controlled,
telescoping column that smoothly positions a camera up to 24 feet
vertically.
This small cross-section system from Mad About Technology can
operate from above or below the camera, achieving nearly impossible
shots with repeatable movements through openings no larger than the
camera itself.
To
Robert Nagle and
Allan Padelford for The Biscuit Jr. self-propelled, high-performance, drivable camera and vehicle platform
The Biscuit Jr.’s unique chassis and portable driver pod
enables traveling photography from a greater range of camera positions
than previously possible, while keeping actors safe and the rig out of
frame.
To
Harold Milligan,
Steven Krycho and
Reiner Doetzkies for the implementation engineering in the development of the Texas Instruments DLP Cinema digital projection technology.
Texas Instruments’ color-accurate, high-resolution,
high-quality digital projection system has replaced most film-based
projection systems in the theatrical environment.
To
Cary Phillips,
Nico Popravka,
Philip Peterson and
Colette Mullenhoff for the architecture, development and creation of the artist-driven interface of the ILM Shape Sculpting System.
This comprehensive system allows artists to quickly enhance
and modify character animation and simulation performances. It has
become a crucial part of ILM’s production workflow over the past decade.
To
Tim Cotter,
Roger van der Laan,
Ken Pearce and
Greg LaSalle for the innovative design and development of the MOVA Facial Performance Capture system.
The MOVA system provides a robust way to capture highly
detailed, topologically consistent, animated meshes of a deforming
object. This technology is fundamental to the facial pipeline at many
visual effects companies. It allows artists to create character
animation of extremely high
quality.
To
Dan Piponi,
Kim Libreri and
George Borshukov for their pioneering work in the development of Universal Capture at ESC Entertainment.
The Universal Capture system broke new ground in the creation
of realistic human facial animation. This technology produced an
animated, high-resolution, textured mesh driven by an actor’s
performance.
To
Marco Revelant for the original concepts and artistic vision, and to
Alasdair Coull and
Shane Cooper for the original architectural and engineering design, of the Barbershop hair grooming system at Weta Digital.
Barbershop’s unique architecture allows direct manipulation
of full-density hair using an intuitive, interactive and procedural
toolset, resulting in greatly enhanced productivity with finer-grained
artistic control than is possible with other existing systems.
To
Michael Sechrest for the modeling design and implementation,
Chris King for the real-time interactive engineering, and
Greg Croft for the user interface design and implementation of SpeedTree Cinema.
This software substantially improves an artist’s ability to
create specifically designed trees and vegetation by combining a
procedural building process with the flexibility of intuitive, direct
manipulation of every detail.
To
Scott Peterson,
Jeff Budsberg and
Jonathan Gibbs for the design and implementation of the DreamWorks Animation Foliage System.
This toolset has a hierarchical spline system, a core data
format and an artist-driven modeling tool, which have been instrumental
in creating art-directed vegetation in animated films for nearly two
decades.
To
Erwin Coumans for the development of the Bullet physics library, and to
Nafees Bin Zafar and
Stephen Marshall for the separate development of two large-scale destruction simulation systems based on Bullet.
These pioneering systems demonstrated that large numbers of
constrained rigid bodies could be used to animate visually complex,
believable destruction effects with minimal simulation time.
To
Brice Criswell and
Ron Fedkiw for the development of the ILM PhysBAM Destruction System.
This system incorporates innovative research on many
algorithms that provide accurate methods for resolving contact,
collision and stacking into a mature, robust and extensible production
toolset. The PhysBAM Destruction System was one of the earliest toolsets
capable of depicting
large-scale destruction with a high degree of design control.
To
Ben Cole for the design of the Kali Destruction System, to
Eric Parker for the development of the Digital Molecular Matter toolkit, and to
James O’Brien for his influential research on the finite element methods that served as a
foundation for these tools.
The combined innovations in Kali and DMM provide artists with
an intuitive, art-directable system for the creation of scalable and
realistic fracture and deformation simulations. These tools established
finite element methods as a new reference point for believable on-screen
destruction.
To
Magnus Wrenninge for leading the design and development of Field3D.
Field3D provides a flexible and open framework for storing
and accessing voxel data efficiently. This allows interchange between
previously incompatible modeling, simulation and rendering software.
To
Robert Bridson for early conceptualization of sparse-tiled voxel data structures and their application to modeling and simulation.
Robert Bridson’s pioneering work on voxel data structures and
its subsequent validation in fluid simulation tools have had a
significant impact on the design of volumetric tools throughout the
visual effects industry.
To
Ken Museth,
Peter Cucka and
Mihai Alden for the creation of OpenVDB.
OpenVDB is a widely adopted, sparse hierarchical data
structure that provides a fast and efficient mechanism for storing and
manipulating voxels.
SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING AWARDS (ACADEMY PLAQUES)
To
lain Neil for the optical design, and to
Andre de Winter for the mechanical design, of the Leica Summilux-C series of lenses.
Incorporating novel telecentric multi-element aspherical
optics, these camera lenses have delivered unprecedented optical and
mechanical performance.
To
Brad Walker,
D. Scott Dewald,
Bill Werner,
Greg Pettitt and
Frank Poradish for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of the Texas Instruments DLP Cinema projection technology, whose
high level of performance enabled color-accurate digital intermediate preview and motion picture theatrical presentation.
Working in conjunction with the film industry, Texas
Instruments created a high-resolution, high-quality digital projection
system that has replaced most film-based projection systems in the
theatrical environment.
To
Ichiro Tsutsui,
Masahiro Take,
Mitsuyasu Tamura and
Mitsuru Asano for the development of the Sony BVM-E Series Professional OLED Master Monitor.
These precise, wide-gamut monitors allow creative image
decisions to be made on set with confidence that the desired images can
be accurately reproduced in post-production.
To
John Frederick,
Bob Myers,
Karl Rasche and
Tom Lianza for the development of the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display.
This cost-effective display offered a stable, wide color
gamut, allowing facility-wide adoption in feature animation and visual
effects studios.
ACADEMY AWARD OF COMMENDATION (SPECIAL PLAQUE)
To
Steven Tiffen,
Jeff Cohen and
Michael Fecik
for their pioneering work in developing dye-based filters that reduce
IR contamination when neutral density filters are used with digital
cameras.
The Tiffen Company identified the problem and rapidly
engineered a series of absorptive filters that ameliorated infrared
artifacts with lenses of all focal lengths. These widely adopted filters
allow cinematographers to work as they have done with film-based
technology.
ACADEMY AWARD OF MERIT (OSCAR STATUETTE)
To
Dr. Larry Hornbeck for the invention of digital micromirror technology as used in DLP Cinema projection.
The Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) is the core technology
that has enabled Texas Instruments’ DLP Cinema projection to become the
standard of the motion picture industry.
GORDON E. SAWYER AWARD (OSCAR STATUETTE)
David W. Gray
Given to an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.
Portions of the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation will be included in the Oscar telecast.
Oscars® for outstanding film achievements of 2014 will be presented on Oscar
Sunday, February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® and televised live on the ABC Television Network at
7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. The Oscars, produced by Craig Zadan and
Neil Meron, also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.