Ten scientific and technical achievements to be honored by Academy

Jan 07, 2011 by Ian Evans

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 10 scientific and technical achievements represented by 22 individual award recipients will be honored at its annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation at the Beverly Wilshire on Saturday, February 12, 2011.

The Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements are:

Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques)

  • To Dr. Mark Sagar for his early and continuing development of influential facial motion retargeting solutions.
  • To Mark Noel for the design, engineering, and development, and to John Frazier for his contributions to the design and safety features, of the NAC Servo Winch System.
  • To James Rodnunsky, Alex MacDonald and Mark Chapman for the development of the Cablecam 3-D volumetric suspended cable camera technologies.
  • To Tim Drnec, Ben Britten Smith and Matt Davis for the development of the Spydercam 3D volumetric suspended cable camera technologies.

Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)

  • To Greg Ercolano for the design and engineering of a series of software systems culminating in the Rush render queue management system.
  • To David M. Laur for the development of the Alfred render queue management system.
  • To Chris Allen, Gautham Krishnamurti, Mark A. Brown and Lance Kimes for the development of Queue, a robust, scalable approach to render queue management.
  • To Florian Kainz for the design and development of the robust, highly scalable distributed architecture of the ObaQ render queue management system.
  • To Eric Tabellion and Arnauld Lamorlette for the creation of a computer graphics bounce lighting methodology that is practical at feature film scale.
  • To Tony Clark, Alan Rogers, Neil Wilson and Rory McGregor for the software design and continued development of cineSync, a tool for remote collaboration and review of visual effects.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2010 will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre. Stick with DigitalHit.com for your 83rd Academy Awards coverage.