Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/786156
www.postmagazine.com 10 POST FEBRUARY 2017 BITS & PIECES CHAOS GROUP CO-FOUNDER WINS ACADEMY AWARD FOR V-RAY LOS ANGELES — Chaos Group (cha osgroup.com) announced last month that its co-founder, Vlado Koylazov, was honored with a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the "original concept, design and implementation of V-Ray," for its advancement of fully ray-traced ren- dering in motion pictures. The award honors pioneers whose "develop- ments result in significant improve- ments [to] motion picture production" and was presented by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at its annual Sci-Tech Award event on February 11th. Chaos Group reports that V-Ray has been used on over 150 feature films since 2002, including recent hits like Doctor Strange, Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War. According to the company, V-Ray pro- vides artists with world-class photore- alism, helping them create high-end, computer-generated visuals. In its announcement, the Academy praised V-Ray for its "efficient pro- duction-ready approach to ray tracing and global illumination, its support for a wide variety of workflows, and its broad industry acceptance [that proved] instrumental in the wide- spread adoption of fully ray-traced rendering for motion pictures." Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Koylazov talks about V-Ray and winning this prestigious award. What does it mean to you to win an Academy Award, recognizing your achievement? "It's truly an honor to be recognized along with the other recipients. The achievement really belongs to the entire V-Ray team, though, and I am thankful to them and to all of the art- ists and studios who have been with us over the years." Why did you feel the need for a product like V-Ray? What did you think the post market was missing that you felt V-Ray would address? "When Chaos Group started in 1997, they were actually a small 3D design and animation studio. I joined a little bit later when [CEO and co-founder] Peter [Mitev] decided that it would be interesting to write software for com- puter graphics. The first plug-in that we did was a volumetric effects plug- in called Phoenix (which was quite different from the Phoenix FD fluid solver that we have now). At some point, I needed accurate volumet- ric shadows for it, so we decided to implement them with raytracing. This turned out to be way more interesting and we started to write our own ren- derer, and from that V-Ray was born. It quickly became clear that there was a growing demand for photorealistic rendering in production, and we put all our efforts into developing V-Ray." V-Ray has been accepted on a large- scale by many post houses. How do you feel knowing that something you conceptualized and developed has such a big impact on the post community? "It's exciting for me, since I love films. It is also very gratifying to know that millions of people see pixels that I helped put on the screen. I've always appreciated visual effects in movies and the work that goes into making them. My hope, always, is to help art- ists as much as I can, and V-Ray is the result of a lot of artist feedback over the years." Why do you think V-Ray has been so widely accepted? Vlado Koylazov CUT+RUN OPENS NEW SAN FRANCISCO STUDIO SAN FRANCISCO — Cut+Run (http:// cutandrun.com/) recently opened a new post production space in San Francisco. Helmed by executive producer Deanne Mehling and senior editor Pete Koob, the office is located in the heart of the city, two blocks off Union Square. Leveraging the partnership between Cut+Run and VFX sister company, Jogger, the office is already seeing a wide range of collab- orations such as Xbox with 215 McCann, Draft Kings with BSSP and Playstation with Venables Bell and Partners. Housing three edit bays and a fully equipped Flame suite, the new space aims to extend to Cut+Run's San Francisco clients with the same level of talent and client services found in the company's offices in Los Angeles, New York City, London and Austin.