All five VFX Academy Award nominees employed Autodesk technology to help deliver Oscar-worthy visual effects; Arnold renderer honored with a 2017 Sci-Tech Award.
'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.' All images courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic. © 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
SAN FRANCISCO -- For the 22nd consecutive year, artists from around the world used media and entertainment software from Autodesk to help bring 2016’s most popular films to the big screen. Autodesk also received recognition this year from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, earning a Scientific and Technical Achievement Award (Sci-Tech) for the Arnold Renderer.
“The amazing display of artistry in the Oscar-nominated work each year consistently raises the bar, and we’re proud to have lent a hand in providing the technology for artists to bring amazing stories and visuals to audiences worldwide,” said Autodesk Senior Vice President Chris Bradshaw. “Autodesk congratulates all of this year’s nominees and appreciates the many studios that used Autodesk offerings to contribute to this year’s Academy Award-nominated films. And to see Arnold, our newest addition to Autodesk Media & Entertainment, earn a Sci-Tech is icing on the cake.”
Best Visual Effects Nominees Tap Autodesk Technology
In the Best Visual Effects category of the Academy Awards, all five nominees -- Deepwater Horizon, Doctor Strange, The Jungle Book, Kubo and the Two Strings and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — were created with help from Autodesk Maya and in some cases, additional Autodesk offerings including Autodesk 3ds Max, the Autodesk Flame Family, the Arnold renderer, and Shotgun Software. Outstanding visuals for all five films were produced by thousands of talented artists working out of visual effects studios across four continents, with work spanning previsualization, visual effects, virtual cinematography, post-production, color grading and more.
Arnold Earns a Scientific and Technical Achievement Award
Annually, the Academy hosts a special awards ceremony to honor achievements that “demonstrate a proven record or contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures.” This year, Marcos Fajardo, Alan King and Thiago Ize received a Scientific and Engineering Award for the Arnold renderer, a modern ray tracer designed to efficiently render the complex geometry in computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation and visual effects (VFX) films, now a part of the Autodesk Media & Entertainment portfolio. The technology was awarded for its highly optimized geometry engine and novel ray-tracing algorithms, which unify the rendering of curves, surfaces, volumetrics and subsurface scattering, and marks the 10th Sci-Tech Award presented to scientists, designers and technologies from Autodesk.
Source: Autodesk
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
