Sci-Tech Academy Awards Honorary Field From Lasers & Roof Pods to Outstanding Designer & OpenVDB

Let the techies be rewarded.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today revealed the 16 sci-tech achievements that will be honored at the annual Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony next month. See the full list below.

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Sci-Tech Awards do not need to have developed and introduced marked achievements during a specified period but must demonstrate a proven record of having added significant value to the motion picture making process, according to AMPAS.

“Each year, a global group of technology practitioners and experts strive to examine the extraordinary tools and techniques used to create motion pictures,” said Barbara Ford Grant, chair of the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, which oversees on the Academy’s investigation. the awards. “This year, we honor 16 technologies for their incredible contributions to how we craft and enhance the movie experience, from safely executing on-set special effects to new levels of fidelity for image presentation and immersive sound to open frameworks that enable artists to share. their digital creations across different software and studios seamlessly. These remarkable achievements in the arts and sciences of filmmaking have propelled our averages to unprecedented levels of excellence.”

The Sci-Tech Awards ceremony will take place on Friday, February 23, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. Here is the full list of 2024 Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements, to be described through AMPAS:

Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)

• To Bill Beck for his pioneering use of semiconductor lasers for theatrical laser projection systems. Bill Beck’s advocacy and education of the motion picture industry while at Laser Light Engine contributed to the transition to laser projection in theatrical exhibition. To Gregory T. Niven for his pioneering work in the use of laser diodes for theatrical laser projection systems. At Novalux and Necsel, Gregory T. Niven demonstrated the specifications and refinement of laser light sources for theatrical displays, leading the industry’s transition to laser cinema projection technology. To Yoshitaka Nakatsu, Yoji Nagao, Tsuyoshi Hirao, Tomonori Morizumi and Kazuma Kozuru for their development of laser diodes for theater laser projection systems. Yoshitaka Nakatsu, Yoji Nagao, Tsuyoshi Hirao, Tomonori Morizumi and Kazuma Kozuru collaborated closely with cinema professionals and manufacturers while at Nichia Corporation’s Laser Diode Division, leading to the development and industry-wide adoption of blue and green laser modules that produces wavelengths and matching power levels. the specific needs of the film market.

• To Arnold Peterson and Elia P. Popov for their continued design and engineering, and to John Frazier for the initial concept of the Blind Driver Roof Pod. The roof pod improves the safety, speed and range of stunt driving, expanding the options for camera placement and obtaining footage of a car with talent in the vehicle, leading to rapid adoption throughout the industry.

• To Jon G. Belyeu for the design and engineering of the Works Film Cable Cutter devices. The unique and resilient design of this series of pyrotechnic cable cutters has made them the method of choice for safe, precise and reliable release of suspension cables for over three decades in motion picture production.

• To James Eggleton and Delwyn Holroyd for the design, implementation and integration of the High Density Encoding (HDE) lossless compression algorithm within the Codex recording tools. The HDE CODEC allows productions to leverage familiar and proven camera raw workflows more efficiently by reducing the storage and bandwidth required for the increased amounts of data from high-resolution photo-site cameras.

• To Jeff Lait, Dan Bailey and Nick Avramoussis for the continued evolution and expansion of the OpenVDB feature set. As a result of core engineering developments contributed by the OpenVDB open source community, it has continued success as an enabling platform for the representation and manipulation of volumetric data for natural phenomena. These additions have helped solidify OpenVDB as an industry standard that drives continuous innovation in visual effects.

• To Oliver Castle and Marcus Schoo for the design and engineering of Atlas, and to Keith Lackey for prototype creation and early development of Atlas. Atlas’s scene description and evaluation framework allows multiple digital content creation tools to be integrated into a coherent production pipeline. Its plug-in architecture and efficient evaluation engine provide consistent rendering from virtual production to lighting.

• To Lucas Miller, Christopher Jon Horvath, Steve LaVietes and Joe Ardent for creating the Alembic Caching and Interchange system. Alembic’s algorithms for storing and retrieving baked, resampled data enable high-efficiency caching across the digital production pipeline and shared views between facilities. As an open source interchange library, Alembic has been widely adopted by major software vendors and production studios.

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Science and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques)

• To Charles Q. Robinson, Nicolas Tsingos, Christophe Chabanne, Mark Vinton and the team of software, hardware and implementation engineers of the Cinema Audio Group at Dolby Laboratories for creating the Dolby Atmos Cinema Sound System. Dolby Atmos has become the industry standard for the creation of object-based cinema audio content and presents theater audiences with an immersive audio experience.

• To Steve Read and Barry Silverstein for their contributions to the design and development of the Prismless IMAX Laser Projector. Using a new optical mirror system, the IMAX Prismless Laser Projector removes prisms from the laser light path to create the high brightness and contrast required for IMAX theatrical presentations.

• To Peter Janssens, Goran Stojmenovik and Wouter D’Oosterlinck for the design and development of the Barco RGB Laser Projector. The new and modular design of the Barco RGB Laser Projector with an internally integrated laser light source produces uniform, flicker-free image fields with improved contrast and brightness, enabling a widely accepted upgrade path from xenon to laser presentation without the need to change the screen or a projection booth. layout of existing theatres.

• To Michael Perkins, Gerwin Damberg, Trevor Davies and Martin J. Richards for the design and development of the Christie E3LH Dolby Vision Cinema Projection System, implemented in collaboration between the Dolby Cinema and Christie Digital engineering teams. The Christie E3LH Dolby Vision Cinema Projection System utilizes a new dual-modulation technique that uses cascaded DLP chips along with an improved laser optical path, enabling a high dynamic range theatrical presentation.

• To Ken Museth, Peter Cucka and Mihai Aldén for the creation of OpenVDB and its continued influence within the motion picture industry. For over a decade, OpenVDB’s core voxel data structures, programming interface, file format and rich data manipulation tools have remained the standard for effectively rendering complex volumetric effects, such as water, fire and smoke.

• To Jaden Oh for the concept and development of the Marvelous Designer clothing creation system. Super Designer introduced a pattern-based approach to building digital clothing, uniting design and visualization and providing a virtual analogue to the physical garment. Under the guidance of Jaden Oh, CLO Virtual Fashion’s team of engineers, UX designers and 3D designers have helped elevate the quality of look and movement in digital wardrobe creation.

• To F. Sebastian Grassia, Alex Mohr, Sunya Boonyatera, Brett Levin and Jeremy Cowles for designing and engineering Pixar’s Universal Scene Description. USD is the first open source scene description framework that can accommodate the full scope of the production workflow across a variety of studio pipelines. Its robust engineering and mature design is reflected by its versatile layering system and high-performance side file format. USD’s wide adoption has made it the de facto interchangeable format of 3D scenes, enabling alignment and collaboration across the motion picture industry. in the collection, the Academy preserves our cinematic history and presents honest and powerful programs about the past, present and future of cinema. Across all initiatives, the Academy connects global audiences – its members, the film industry, and film fans – through their shared passion for making and watching films.

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