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Last night was the 10th annual Visual Effects Society awards event, honoring dozens of visual effects people across the industry for their efforts of the past year.  Hosted by Patton Oswalt and with special appearances by Marton Scorsese, Antonio Banderas, Lou Ferrigno, and others, it was an impressive event.

More than a thousand attendees — filmmakers, producers, directors and members of the visual effects community– gathered to recognize the year’s best work and the artists who created it. Rango was the evening’s most honored project with four awards, including Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture, and Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in an Animated Feature Motion Picture. Hugo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Transformers: Dark of the Moon all took home two awards in the Feature Motion Picture categories, while Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones each garnered a pair of awards in the Television categories.

Get the full list of award winners after the break.

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Graphics award, ves

Texas A&M’s Dr. Scotty Schaefer has just received the NSF CAREER Award for his work on “Parameterization and Tessellation for Computer Graphics”.  With the award he’ll be continuing his work through 2017, investigating the relationships between surface shape and quality to parameterization.

“Project outcomes will significantly advance the state of the art not only in computer graphics and geometric modeling, but also in other areas of applied mathematics and computer science where the representation and precise control of smooth freeform shapes play a key role,” Schaefer said.

via Schaefer receives prestigious NSF CAREER Award | News | 2012 | 01 | 20 | College of Engineering.

Science award, nsf, research, texasa&m

This weekend Sanjay Bhatt received the Gannett Award for Digital Innovation in Watchdog Journalism for a great piece in The Seattle Times about the US Treasury’s loan-modification program.  The article itself was good, but the point was really driven home with a nice interactive visualization powered by Tableau Public.

“We’re incredibly happy for Sanjay,” said Elissa Fink, Tableau Software’s Chief Marketing Officer.  “He has done amazing work and is consistently ahead of the curve in digital reporting. We’re very proud that he uses Tableau Public to tell his stories.”

via Writer from The Seattle Times uses Tableau Public in groundbreaking reporting, wins Gannett Award | Cision Wire.

Graphics award, gannett, tableau

University of Toronto Professor Aaron Hertzmann is winner of the 2010 Steacie Prize for natural science, becoming only the award’s second Computer Science profession to win it since it’s inception in 1964.  Primarily for his work in computer vision and machine learning, he’s been involved with several nonphotorealistic rendering technologies currently under investigation by groups like Pixar.

Hertzmann is well-known in the field for his influential work linking three separate research areas within computer science – computer graphics, machine learning and computer vision. By focusing on the application of machine-learning techniques and Bayesian methods, he has resolved a wide range of computer graphics problems. These include computer rendering of images in diverse artistic styles (an area known as non-photorealistic rendering); automated construction of mathematical and computational models of human locomotion for computer animation in film and computer games; estimating the three-dimensional structure of a non-rigid object from a video sequence of that object; and finding new methods for removing the effects of “camera shake” from photographs in digital photography.

via University of Toronto

Science award

City University London won a Discovery Award at the recent IEEE VisWeek conference for their Hurricane Tracking Visualization tool.  A joint effort between climate scientists at NCAR and visualization esperts at giCentre, the work was to find a way to parse the massive database of hurricane tracks for the last several hundred years.

Through the Willis Research Network we worked in close collaboration to develop an exploratory analysis tool for the exploratory analysis of thousands of simulated storm tracks generated through multi-century global climate simulations. We use this tool to help validate the model, generate research questions and disseminate this knowledge to peers and the insurance industry who are interested in the financial impacts of atmospheric risk and impact of climate change on this.

The award shows not only the expertise of giCentre,  but the important of creating tools that can make data not only accessible to the scientific community, but the public community at large.

Matthew Foote, WRN Research Director added: “The communication of complex hazard and risk information is an increasingly critical part of insurers’ decision-making process. Tools such as those being developed at City with our research partners are advancing the application of state-of-the-art technologies and the integration of world-leading science and risk management.”

via City University London wins scientific impact award for hurricane research – City University London.

Science award, gicentre, visweek

HPC News site HPCWire has released their 2010 Reader’s Choice awards and Kitware brings home 2 of them for their fantastic Paraview product.  With both the Reader’s Choice and Editor’s Choice for Best Visualization Product or Technology, they’ve proven just how popular the open-source tool ParaView is.

“HPCwire readers are among the most informed in the HPC community and these awards represent which HPC-related companies are making the biggest impacts in mind-share within this community, said Tom Tabor, publisher of HPCwire. “The HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards send a strong message to the recipients that those in the global HPC community recognize their work, and consider their efforts meritorious…Kitware is honored to accept these awards on behalf of the global ParaView community that has made ParaView the success it is today.

via Kitware Receives Honors in 2010 HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards.

Science award, kitware, paraview

A few days ago we brought you news of the Lumiere Awards handed out at the International 3D Society awards.   NVidia has a new press release out announcing that they won for 3D Vision, and giving details on several of the other winners.

3ality Digital was honored for its Stereo Image Processor (SIP) technology; Autodesk for its “Maya®” 3D visual effects software technology; Dolby Laboratories for its “Dolby 3D” system; Steve Hines and The Walt Disney Studios for the “Disney Dual Camera Rig”; In-Three for its “Dimensionalization®” technology; MasterImage 3D for its “Digital 3D Cinema System”; Nvidia for its “3D Vision™” technology; Quantel for its “Pablo” 3D color correction and finishing system; Sassoon Film Design for its “2D to 3D Conversion” technology; Sony Pictures Imageworks for its “3D Pipeline”; The Walt Disney Studios for its “3D Pipeline”; and XpanD for its “Active 3D Cinema System.”

Get all the details after the break.

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Science autodesk, award, nvidia, panasonic

The Wall Street Journal published the recipients of their annual Innovation Awards, and there are quite a few visualization-oriented winners.

The one most people are talking about is Unity’s win in the Software category:

San Francisco-based Unity Technologies won in this category for a set of game-development tools that make it cheap and easy to create three-dimensional interactive content, including games, training simulations and medical visualizations, for a range of devices from cellphones to game systems.

The software for creating 3D online universes typically requires teams of engineers who spend years creating and refining these tools. As a result, they’re often too complex and expensive for small-scale or amateur game developers.

Unity’s software simplifies the process of building 3D games and other programs. It includes an easy-to-use editor that can take prefabricated components—rain or falling crates, for example—and combine them with other features to create full game environments.

But they’re not the only ones.  Some others to see:

Consumer Electronics, Runners up:

NanoLumens Inc., U.S.: Lightweight digital displays that are flexible, thin and energy efficient. The first product, a 112-inch display, weighs less than 90 pounds, is less than an inch thick and consumes less energy than five light bulbs.

Ford Motor Co., U.S.: MyFord Touch, an instrument panel for cars that replaces traditional buttons, knobs and gauges with voice commands, customizable LCD screens and five-way controls on the steering wheel similar to those on cellphones and MP3 players.

Nokia Corp., Finland: An “augmented reality” browser for mobile devices, called Point & Find, that lets users get information about real-life objects by pointing a camera phone at the object.

Medical Devices Winner:

Zoom Focus Eyewear LLC, winner of the overall Silver award, won in this category. (See “ A Different Kind of Eyeglasses “)

Network/Broadband Winner:

Vidyo Inc., based in Hackensack, N.J., won in this category with its technology for delivering high-quality videoconferencing over the Internet or cellular networks at a fraction of the cost of dedicated “telepresence” systems.

and Runnerup:

Microsoft Corp., U.S.: An experimental Internet application, called Pivot, designed to help users to explore, organize and visualize collections of data quickly by showing relationships between the information.

The WSJ Technology Innovation Award Winners, Category by Category – WSJ.com.

Science award, unity, wsj

At the recent 3D Film Festival in Hollywood, Germany’s FullFeedback Productions and PassmoreLab took home the top prize in the “3D Narrative Feature Film (Conversion)” Category for their film “Iron Doors”.

“We are honored to accept this award from 3DFF, and we also want to thank Stephen for trusting and allowing us the creative freedom to use stereoscopy as a gentle storytelling tool. The best part is that this award confirms the validity of this approach to the film,” said Greg Passmore, president of PassmoreLab. “We chose to use depth as a tool and not a gimmick. Iron Doors is a film that uses 3D, rather than it being a ‘3D film’. In the early days of computer graphics, there were a whole slew of CGI films. Eventually, those using CGI stopped being referred to as “CGI films” — for example, District 9 — an effects film where the effects are not the point. That’s what we did with Iron Doors – not poke the viewer in the eye or throw things at the camera – but use 3D to help provide a sense of presence for the viewer.”

Glad to see more talk of using 3D as a storytelling device, not just a gimmick.  It definitely won’t be easy, but that’s what will have to happen to keep 3D in Cinema’s alive: Finding useful ways to use it to advance and further the story in ways 2D can’t, rather than just taking every single movie and shooting it with a stereo camera, just because they can.

The movie is a psychological thriller of a man locked in an iron vault, who must escape before he dies of dehydration.  It will also make an appearance at the Raindance Film Festival in London.

via “Iron Doors 3D Wins Best 3D Feature Award”.

Graphics award, contest, movie, stereoscopic

The 2010 MacArthur Fellows have been named and each awarded their half-mil ($500,000 USD), and one recipient amongst the crowd shows the not only the popularity of visualization but the power of it as well.  Drew Berry, a biomedical animator specializing in the high-scientific work in cellular and molecular processes, has the honor of winning an award.

Trained as a cell biologist as well as in light and electron microscopy, Berry brings a rigorous scientific approach to each project, immersing himself in the relevant research in structural biology, biochemistry, and genetics to ensure that the most current data are represented. In three- and four-dimensional renderings of such key biological concepts as cell death, tumor growth, and the packaging of DNA, Berry captures the details of molecular shape, scale, behavior, and spatio-temporal dynamics in striking form.

via Drew Berry – MacArthur Foundation.

Science award, biomed, macarthur