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Scientific And Technical Achievement Academy Awards Announced

Twenty-one Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievement will be presented on March 2, 2002 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Out of the 14 Technical Achievement Awards, presented as certificates, the following recipients will be honored for creating technology used in the field of animation and visual effects. The awards are presented based upon recommendations from the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, chaired by Academy visual effects branch governor Richard Edlund.

- John Anderson, Jim Hourihan, Cary Phillips and Sebastian Marino for the development of the ILM Creature Dynamics System, which makes hair, clothing, skin, flesh and muscle simulation both directable and integrated within a character animation and rigging environment.

- Dr. Steve Sullivan and Eric Schafer for the development of the ILM Motion and Structure Recovery System (MARS). The MARS system provides analysis of camera motion and object motion, and their dimensions.

- Geoff Jackson and Roger Woodburn for their DMS 120S Camera Motor, which features built-in time-lapse programmability and is useful in an unusually wide range of applications, including MOS production filming, high-speed photography, animation and motion control.

- Bill Spitzak, Paul Van Camp, Jonathan Egstad and Price Pethel for their pioneering effort on the NUKE-2D Compositing Software allowing for the creation of complex interactive digital composites using relatively modest computing hardware.

- Lance Williams for his pioneering influence in the field of computer-generated animation and effects for motion pictures. The ongoing influence of Lance Williams is exemplified in his three seminal papers "Casting Shadows on Curved Surfaces," "Pyramidal Parametrics" and "View Interpolation for Image Synthesis."

- Dr. Uwe Sassenberg and Rolf Schneider for the development of "3D Equalizer," an advanced and robust camera and object match-moving system.This dominant commercial tracking system provides "survey-free" tracking, which significantly reduces the need for painstaking, error-prone measurements on sets.

- Garland Stern for the concept and implementation of the Cel Paint Software System. All current cel painting applications in the motion picture industry can be traced back to the original idea and pioneering implementation of Garland Stern.

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