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6 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 7 S P O T L I G H T 18 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS TO RECEIVE ACADEMY AWARDS The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will bestow 18 scientific and technical achievements, represented by 34 individual award recipients as well as five organizations, at its annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation on Saturday, February 11. Unlike other Academy Awards to be present- ed this year, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have been developed and introduced during 2016. Rather, the achievements must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures. Ten Techni- cal Achievement Awards – Academy Certifi- cates will be given, as well as eight Scientific and Engineering Awards – Academy Plaques. A few of those receiving Certificates are: Larry Gritz for the design, implementation, and dissemination of Open Shading Lan- guage (OSL). OSL is a highly optimized runtime architecture and language for programmable shading and texturing that has become a de facto industry standard. It enables artists at all levels of technical proficiency to create physi- cally plausible materials for efficient production rendering. Carl Ludwig, Eugene Troubetzkoy, and Maurice van Swaaij for the pioneering devel- opment of the CGI Studio renderer at Blue Sky Studios. CGI Studio's groundbreaking raytracing and adaptive sampling techniques, coupled with streamlined artist controls, demonstrated the feasibility of raytraced rendering for feature-film production. Parag Havaldar for the development of expression-based facial performance-capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks. This pioneering system enabled large-scale use of an- imation rig-based facial performance capture for motion pictures, combining solutions for tracking, stabilization, solving, and animator-controllable curve editing. Nicholas Apostoloff and Geoff Wedig for the design and development of animation rig- based facial performance-capture systems at ImageMovers Digital and Digital Domain. These systems evolved through independent, then com- bined, efforts at two different studios, resulting in an artist-controllable, editable, scalable solution for the high-fidelity transfer of facial performanc- es to convincing digital characters. Kiran Bhat, Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell, and Paige Warner for the design and development of the ILM facial perfor- mance-capture solving system. This system enables high-fidelity facial performance transfer from actors to digital characters in large-scale productions while retaining full artistic control, and integrates stable rig-based solving and the resolution of secondary detail in a controllable pipeline. A few of those receiving Plaques are: Marcos Fajardo for the creative vision and original implementation of the Arnold renderer, and Chris Kulla, Alan King, Thiago Ize, and Clifford Stein for their highly optimized geome- try engine and novel raytracing algorithms that unify the rendering of curves, surfaces, volumet- rics, and subsurface scattering as developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Solid Angle SL. Arnold's scalable and memory-efficient, sin- gle-pass architecture for path tracing, its authors' publication of the underlying techniques, and its broad industry acceptance were instrumental in leading a widespread adoption of fully raytraced rendering for motion pictures. Vladimir Koylazov for the original concept, design, and implementation of V-Ray from Chaos Group. V-Ray's efficient production-ready approach to raytracing and global illumination, its support for a wide variety of workflows, and its broad industry acceptance were instrumental in the widespread adoption of fully raytraced rendering for motion pictures. Luca Fascione, JP Lewis, and Iain Mat- thews for the design, engineering, and develop- ment of the FACETS facial performance capture and solving system at Weta Digital. FACETS was one of the first reliable systems to demonstrate accurate facial tracking from an actor-mounted camera, combined with rig-based solving, in large-scale productions. This system enables animators to bring the nuance of the original live performances to a new level of fidelity for animat- ed characters. Steven Rosenbluth, Joshua Barratt, Robert Nolty, and Archie Te for the engineer- ing and development of the Concept Overdrive motion-control system. This user-friendly hard- ware and soware system creates and controls complex interactions of real and virtual motion in hard real time, while safely adapting to the needs of on-set filmmakers. ARNOLD RENDERING BLUE SKY: ICE AGE SONY: ANGRY BIRDS WETA: THE BFG ILM: WARCRAFT