BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.—And the Technical Oscar goes to… The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ (AMPAS) annual Scientific and Technical Awards may not have had the drama of the Academy Awards set to take place in a couple of weeks, but it still was a celebration of individuals and companies who had earned Technical Oscars for their past work.
AMPAS describes the Technical Oscars as a proven record of contributing significant value to the film and television industry, with recipients from around the world.
Here is the full list of Scientific and Technical Award Winners:
Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)
- Thomson Grass Valley for the design of the Viper Film Stream digital camera
- Larry Gritz for the design, implementation and dissemination of Open Shading Language
- Carl Ludwig, Eugene Troubetzkoy and Maurice von Swaaji for the development of CGI Studio renderer at Blue Sky Studios
- Brian Whited for the development of the Meander drawing system at Walt Disney Animation Studios
- Mark Rappaport, Scott Oshita, Jeff Cruts and Todd Minobe for the creation of the Creature Effects Animatronic Horse Puppet
- Glenn Sanders and Howard Stark for the design and engineering of the Zaxcom Digital Wireless Microphone System
- David Thomas, Lawrence E. Fisher and David Bundy for the creation of the Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless Microphone System
- Parag Havaldar for the development of expression-based facial performance-capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks
- Nicholas Apostoloff and Geoff Wedig for the development of animation rig-based facial performance-capture for motion pictures at ImageMovers Digital and Digital Domain
- Kiran Bhat, Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell and Paige Warner for the design and development of the ILM facial performance-capture solving system
Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques)
- Arri for the Super 35 format Alexa digital camera system
- Red Digital Cinema for the Red Epic digital cinema camera
- Sony for the F65 CineAlta camera
- Panavision and Sony for the Genesis digital motion picture camera
- Marcos Fajardo for the Arnold Renderer and Christopher Kulla, Alan King, Thiago Ize and Clifford Stein for geometry engine and ray-tracing algorithm for rendering at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Solid Angle SL
- Vladimir Koylazov for the V-Ray from Chaos Group
- Luca Fascione, J.P. Lewis and Iain Matthew for the FACETS facial performance capture and solving system at Weta Digital
- Steven Rosenbluth, Joshua Barratt, Robert Nolty and Archie Te for the Concept Overdrive motion control system
The ceremony was held on Feb. 11 in Beverly Hills and was hosted by Leslie Mann and John Cho.
