Achievements Honored with Sci-Tech Academy Awards
Ten scientific and technical achievements represented by 33 individual recipients will be honored at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation in February. In addition, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) will receive a special award recognizing a century of fundamental contributions to the advancement of motion-picture standards and technology.
“This year’s honorees represent a wide range of new tech, including a modular, inflatable airwall system for composited visual effects, a ubiquitous 3D digital paint system, and a 3D printing technique for animation,” said Richard Edlund, Academy Award-winning visual effects artist and chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee. “With their outstanding, innovative work, these technologists, engineers, and inventors have further expanded filmmakers’ creative opportunities on the big screen.”
The Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements receiving an Academy Certificate are:
Michael John Keesling for the design and development of Image Shaker, an optical system that convincingly creates the illusion of the camera shaking in a variable and repeatable manner.
David McIntosh, Steve Marshall Smith, Mike Branham, and Mike Kirilenko for the engineering and development of the Aircover Inflatables Airwall.
Trevor Davies, Thomas Wan, Jon Scott Miller, Jared Smith, and Matthew Robinson for the development of the Dolby Laboratories PRM Series Reference Color Monitors.
Ronald Mallet and Christoph Bregler for the design and engineering of the Industrial Light & Magic Geometry Tracker, a novel, general-purpose tracker and solver.
Jim Hourihan, Alan Trombla, and Seth Rosenthal for the design and development of Tweak Software RV, a highly extensible media player system.
J Robert Ray, Cottalango Leon, and Sam Richards for the design, engineering, and continuous development of Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Itview.
Keith Goldfarb, Steve Linn, Brian Green, and Raymond Chih for the development of the Rhythm & Hues Global DDR System.
Richard Chuang and Rahul Thakkar for the groundbreaking design, and Andrew Pilgrim, Stewart Birnam, and Mark Kirk for the review workflows and advanced playback features of the DreamWorks Animation Media Review System.
An Academy plaque goes to Brian McLean and Martin Meunier for pioneering the use of rapid prototyping for character animation in stop--motion film production.
Another plaque is being awarded to Jack Greasley, Kiyoyuki Nakagaki, Duncan Hopkins, and Carl Rand for the design and engineering of the MARI 3D texture painting system.
The Foundry Releases Mari 3
The Foundry is now shipping Mari 3, the latest version of its high-resolution 3D painting tool. Mari 3 delivers new avenues for pipeline integration and productivity enhancing workflows that help 3D paint artists iterate faster, manage complexity better, and produce higher-quality results.
Some of the key features in the new release include: Modo rendering and texture baking directly from within Mari; APIs to integrate a user’s renderer of choice; support for OpenSubdiv and FBX geometry; enhanced color space management workflows through OpenColorIO; an exposed node graph for advanced users; and integrated Arnold, V-Ray, Unreal, and Redshift shaders.
Pricing for Mari 3 starts at approximately $1,740.