18 Scientific and Technical Achievements will be acknowledged at the annual Scientific and Technical Academy Awards Presentation on Saturday, February 11 at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. They will be represented by 34 individual academy recipients and five organizations.
Chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, Ray Feeney, is enthusiastic about the awards. “This year we are particularly pleased to be able to honor not only a wide range of new technologies, but also the pioneering digital cinema cameras that helped facilitate the widespread conversion to electronic image capture for motion picture production,” he said.
Unlike other Academy Awards, these achievements do not need to have been completed in 2016. Instead, they must have a record of significant assistance to the creation of motion pictures. Segments of the presentation will be included in the Oscars telecast on Sunday, February 26 at 7pm ET.
TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS ACADEMY AWARDS
Thomson Grass Valley: Designing the Viper FilmStream digital camera system
Larry Gritz: The creation of Open Shading Language (OSL)
Carl Ludwig, Eugene Troubetzkoy, and Maurice van Swaaij: Development of the CGI Studio renderer at Blue Sky Studios
Brian Whited: Designing the Meander drawing system at Walt Disney Animation Studios
Mark Rappaport, Scott Oshita, Jeff Cruts, and Todd Minobe: Creating the Creature Effects Animatronic Horse Puppet
Glenn Sanders and Howard Stark: designing the Zaxcom Digital Wireless Microphone System
David Thomas, Lawrence E. Fisher and David Bundy: Creating the Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless Microphone System
Parag Havaldar: developing the expression-based facial performance-capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks
Nicholas Apostoloff and Geoff Wedig: developing the animation rig-based facial performance-capture systems at ImageMovers Digital and Digital Domain
Kiran Bhat, Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell and Paige Warner: developing the ILM facial performance-capture solving system
SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING ACADEMY AWARDS
ARRI: pioneering design and engineering of the Super 35 format Alexa digital camera system
RED Digital Cinema: designing the RED Epic digital cinema cameras with upgradeable full-frame image sensors
Sony: The development the F65 CineAlta camera with its pioneering high-resolution imaging sensor, excellent dynamic range, and full 4K output
Panavision and Sony: developing the Genesis digital motion picture camera
Marcos Fajardo for creating the Arnold Renderer, and Chris Kulla, Alan King, Thiago Ize and Clifford Stein for their highly optimized geometry engine and ray-tracing algorithms which unify the rendering of curves, surfaces, volumetrics as developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Solid Angle SL
Vladimir Koylazov: creating the V-Ray from Chaos Group
Luca Fascione, J.P. Lewis and Iain Matthews: creating the FACETS facial performance capture and solving system at Weta Digital