For the 10th consecutive year, every movie up for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards was created using NVIDIA Quadro GPUs.
The 90th annual Academy Awards — better known as the Oscars — takes place on Sunday, March 4. From blockbuster visual effects to groundbreaking technical achievements, NVIDIA technology and employees have contributed to Academy Award caliber work for 10 years running.
This year’s nominees:
- War for the Planet of the Apes: Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Dan Lemmon and Joel Whist
- Kong: Skull Island: Stephen Rosenbaum, Jeff White, Scott Benza and Mike Meinardus
- Blade Runner 2049: John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner and Dan Sudick
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Ben Morris, Mike Mulholland, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould
War for the Planet of the Apes is the third chapter of the critically acclaimed blockbuster franchise. The VFX team focused on creating highly realistic interactions between the apes and their environments, from their hidden fortress to the Colonel’s prison.
“War for the Planet of the Apes was a leap forward for our animation,” said Daniel Barrett, animation supervisor at Weta Digital. “We are now working in real time with our animation puppets, even with dozens of characters and full-resolution facial rigs, which means our animators are right there in the moment with the characters. NVIDIA GPU technology helped us get there.”
NVIDIAN Honored for Scientific and Technical Achievement
Every year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honors an international group of technologists who have significantly contributed to the ongoing evolution of motion pictures, and whose efforts continue to empower the creativity of the industry.
This year, on February 10, the Academy honored 34 recipients with Scientific and Technical Achievement awards. Among them was Joe Mancewicz, a senior software engineer at NVIDIA, who has contributed to multiple Oscar-winning films. This is his second Academy Award.
This year, Mancewicz is nominated, along with Matt Derksen of Rhythm & Hues and Hans Rijpkema of Autodesk, for the design, architecture and implementation of a construction kit rigging system for Rhythm & Hues, where Mancewicz and Derksen worked previously.
“I’m honored the Academy has recognized my colleagues and my work at Rhythm & Hues to enable 15 years of improvements to production efficiency and animation quality,” Mancewicz said. “At NVIDIA, I’m excited to be applying my experience to driving advancements in artificial intelligence across industries.”
Learn How Amazing VFX Are Created
Visual effects pipelines are undergoing a transition to data-driven generative models. Join us at the GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley, March 26-29, to learn how Digital Domain is improving its VFX development pipeline and where machine learning is taking them in their session: A Data-Driven Future in Visual Effects Pipelines.
See the full list of Media & Entertainment industry-related sessions at GTC.
Image courtesy WETA Digital. © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.