The Advanced Imaging Society’s 11th annual awards honored technical achievements currently accelerating the entertainment industry; 12 distinguished technical achievements were recognized for cutting-edge technology having ‘Impact through Innovation.’
The Advanced Imaging Society has announced winners of the 11th Annual Entertainment Technology Lumiere Awards, recognizing technical achievements currently accelerating the entertainment industry. The organization recognizes 12 “distinguished technical achievements” driving the entertainment industry forward with “impact through innovation.”
This year’s honorees include Digital Domain, The Third Floor, EIZO, Stereo D/Deluxe Animation Studios, Sohonet, Moxion, PacketFabric, Deluxe, Evercast, USC Institute for Creative Technologies, Cinematography Database and Black Dot Films VR.
Digital Domain – Masquerade 2.0
The facial capture system generates high quality moving 3D meshes of an actor’s facial performance directly from a portable helmet capture system. This data can then be transformed into a digital character’s face or their digital double, or a completely different digital person. In this system the actor is free to move around on set, interacting live with other actors to create a more natural performance. The images from the helmet camera system worn by the actors are processed into a high quality, per frame, moving mesh that contains the actor’s nuanced performance, complete with wrinkle detail, skin sliding and subtle eye motion, etc.
The Third Floor – Cyclops
The streamlined simulcam solution, able to be deployed on handheld displays, leverages the power of Apple ARKit and Unreal. Cyclops allows filmmakers to visualize CG assets on mobile devices on real-world sets while matching the lenses of the physical camera. It has proven to be a very flexible and feature rich tool for previs and VFX planning on-set, leveraging new technology to create a superb production solution.
EIZO – ColorEdge & ColorNavigator
The calibration software is ideal for post-production, animation, and visual effects with precise color management and a built-in colorimeter for self-calibration. They also include key technological innovations such as uniformity correction to ensure corner to corner brightness and color accuracy, embedded 16 and 24-bit color processors for smooth gradations and color precision, and built-in colorimeter for automated hands-free calibration.
Stereo D / Deluxe Animation Studios – FLUX
The full-featured management system is uniquely configured for the new requirements of virtual production during the pandemic. The platform makes assets self-aware and enables shots to move themselves as artists work. It allows collaboration and access to vital information from around the globe with little effort and no barriers.
Moxion – Immediates
The product of multiple innovations, Immediates enable post and production to securely share and review each other’s footage, within minutes of creation. Its footage, complete with Camera, Action and VFX Wranglers’ metadata, flows from the onset QTAKE video assist into the Moxion cloud, where it can be reviewed and logged, before flowing into Editorial or VFX (incl Shotgun) workflows. Conversely, footage created in post, for example VFX Previs, Cuts, can be sent, via the Moxion Cloud, Back to Set – security to the Video Assist – for playback on the onset monitors, or to any onset iOS device.
PacketFabric – M&E Connectivity Cloud
Designed specifically to deliver high-capacity multi-cloud transfer that enables an end-to-end, cloud-based production pipeline. With presence in over 170 data centers worldwide, the PacketFabric network is changing the game for visual effects and distribution in traditional and virtual production and broadcast.
Deluxe – One Dub
An innovative remote audio cloud recording tool that brings professional, frame-accurate audio recording directly to the web browsers of actors, sound mixers and directors. The platform provides an ultra-secure recording environment accessible by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Sohonet – ClearView Flex
The software enables crews to collaborate securely and effectively on video content in real-time even when the entire team cannot be in the same room, whether due to time, travel and budget constraints or unforeseen events such as COVID-19. The flexibility in bit-rate configurations, support for “critical review” and high security allow reliable and efficient collaborations during virtual production.
Evercast – Evercast
A real-time collaboration platform that securely streams any creative workflow with quality and ultra-low latency (200 ms), supported by an ever-expanding set of market-driven features. It is the first virtual workflow resource that combines full video conferencing, HD live-streaming, and full-spectrum audio in a single, easy-to-use web-based platform.
USC Institute for Creative Technologies – LED Lighting for Virtual Production:
LED Lighting Reproduction surrounds actors with color LED lighting to light them with renderings of real and virtual locations to facilitate photoreal compositing. Actors can be surrounded by individual color-controllable LED light sources and/or denser LED panels to display the illumination on them. By being able to record or render the illumination in the scene using high dynamic range imaging, the lighting can be automatically driven to match nearly all aspects of the lighting (diffuse shading, shadows, and reflections) to match the illumination in the scene. The actor can then be composited into a background plate of the scene, or in the case that the LED lighting density is sufficient, the realistic compositing effect can be achieved entirely in-camera.
Cinematography Database – Cine Tracer:
A real time app/game that enables filmmakers to visualize their films in a fully 3D environment. Cine Tracer is created with Unreal Engine and was one of the first apps to implement Nvidia RTX Ray Tracing. The Real Time Raytracing allows cinematographers to plan on set light in real time but with greater photometric accuracy.
Black Dot Films VR – High-Speed VR: EAGLE
An ultra-high-speed VR camera rig and capture technique that allows crews to film full 360-degree action at 1,000 frames-per-second. The R&D phase lasted over 2 years, focused on the designing of a custom-built rig, lens configuration, and filming technique enabling the deployment of Phantom sensors for immersive 360 VR capture. First used in the French Alps in 2018, the system recorded the dramatic flight of a European Royal Eagle as it leaps into the air and dives to pull a fish out of a lake in ultra-slow motion – a true VR first.
The Advanced Imaging Society was formed in 2009 by industry creative stakeholders including The Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, DreamWorks Animation (DWA), Sony, Paramount, IMAX, Dolby, Panasonic, and MasterImage to advance the creative arts and sciences of stereoscopic 3D. As new cutting-edge technologies come to the forefront, the Society has been charged with “informing the content pipeline” of professionals on these emerging innovations.
Complete information is available here.
Source: The Advanced Imaging Society
