Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1503172
a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 3 c g w 1 9 C GW recently announced the winners of the Silver Edge Awards for the 2023 NAB Show. Selected by CGW's editorial team, the annual Silver Edge Awards recognize the most innovative and impres- sive technologies on display at the NAB Show. These best-of-show selections demonstrate remarkable advancements in the field of computer graphics. Out of the over 1,200 exhibitors at this year's NAB Show, CGW presented ten companies with Silver Edge Awards for their out- standing technological achievements. See the full list of winners and learn about their products below. W I L D C A P T U R E : D I G I T A L H U M A N P L A T F O R M Wild Capture's Digital Human Platform transforms volumetric foot- age into 3D animated assets with unprecedented realism and effi- ciency. The company's AI-driven suite of tools and Unify Solver core technology have the potential to take digital human asset creation workflows to the next level in VFX, gaming, and beyond. The platform's suite of AI-driven tools that enable the integration of volumetric video and realistic digital humans include Unify Solver, Cohort Crowd, and Outfit. Unify Solver is a cloud-based volumetric footage transforma- tion solution that delivers interoperable 3D animated humans that achieve unprecedented realism in their interaction with the CGI world around them. Leveraging the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework, the technology automates standard 3D anima- tion procedural tasks and settings adjustments to provide content creators with expedient human assets to drive engagement in new ways. Cohort Crowd is a USD-compliant volumetric soware tool that unlocks customizable crowds for all 3D pipelines, allowing perfor- mances to be segmented and scattered throughout an environ- ment. With built-in randomizing features, individual crowd control, and a paintbrush feature to identify spacing and population density, this robust interoperable toolkit can create hundreds of randomized characters from a single performance character without duplicating the data. Outfit is a tool designed to blend the world of digital fashion with the realism of volumetric video. Unlocking the application of CG cloth designs onto animated volumetric models, the tool makes it possible to create customizable 'volcap' characters across all 3D pipelines. Outfit is the only interoperable technology that combines the life-like realism of CG cloth with interactive volumetric video without the need for motion capture or other supplementing tech- nology. Z B Y H P : Z 8 F U R Y W O R K S T A T I O N With cutting-edge single socket technology enabling 56 cores in just a single Intel Xeon w9 processor, Z by HP's new Z8 Fury workstation can speed up compute-heavy tasks across VFX and data science. But it's more than just advanced processing power that makes the Z8 Fury extraordinary. Adopting a single processor compute archi- Wild Capture: Digital Human Platform Wild Capture: Digital Human Platform Z by HP: Z8 Fury Workstation