96th Academy Awards (2023) — Oscars database

Dolby Atmos has become an industry standard for object-based cinema audio content creation and presents a premier immersive audio experience for theatrical audiences.

Utilizing a novel optical mirror system, the IMAX Prismless Laser Projector removes prisms from the laser light path to create the high brightness and contrast required for IMAX theatrical presentation.

The Barco RGB Laser Projector's novel and modular design with an internally integrated laser light source produces flicker-free uniform image fields with improved contrast and brightness, enabling a widely adopted upgrade path from xenon to laser presentation without the need for alteration to screen or projection booth layout of existing theaters.

The Christie E3LH Dolby Vision Cinema Projection System utilizes a novel dual modulation technique that employs cascaded DLP chips along with an improved laser optical path, enabling high dynamic range theatrical presentation.

For over a decade, OpenVDB's core voxel data structures, programming interface, file format and rich tools for data manipulation continue to be the standard for efficiently representing complex volumetric effects, such as water, fire and smoke.

Jaden Oh

Marvelous Designer introduced a pattern-based approach to digital costume construction, unifying design and visualization and providing a virtual analogy to physical tailoring. Under Jaden Oh's guidance, the team of engineers, UX designers and 3D designers at CLO Virtual Fashion has helped to raise the quality of appearance and motion in digital wardrobe creations.

USD is the first open-source scene description framework capable of accommodating the full scope of the production workflow across a variety of studio pipelines. Its robust engineering and mature design are exemplified by its versatile layering system and the highly performant crate file format. USD's wide adoption has made it a de facto interchange format of 3D scenes, enabling alignment and collaboration across the motion picture industry.

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AWARD (Technical Achievement Award)

Bill Beck

Bill Beck's advocacy and education to the cinema industry while at Laser Light Engines contributed to the transition to laser projection in theatrical exhibition.

Gregory T. Niven

At Novalux and Necsel, Gregory T. Niven demonstrated and refined specifications for laser light sources for theatrical exhibition, leading the industry's transition to laser cinema projection technology.

Yoshitaka Nakatsu, Yoji Nagao, Tsuyoshi Hirao, Tomonori Morizumi and Kazuma Kozuru collaborated closely with cinema professionals and manufacturers while at Nichia Corporation Laser Diode Division, leading to the development and industry-wide adoption of blue and green laser modules producing wavelengths and power levels matching the specific needs of the cinema market.

The roof pod improves the safety, speed and range of stunt driving, extending the options for camera placement while acquiring picture car footage with talent in the vehicle, leading to rapid adoption across the industry.

Jon G. Belyeu

The unique and resilient design of this suite of pyrotechnic cable cutters has made them the preferred method for safe, precise and reliable release of suspension cables for over three decades in motion picture production.

The HDE codec allows productions to leverage familiar and proven camera raw workflows more efficiently by reducing the storage and bandwidth needed for the increased amounts of data from high-photosite-count cameras.

Core engineering developments contributed by OpenVDB's open-source community have led to its ongoing success as an enabling platform for representing and manipulating volumetric data for natural phenomena. These additions have helped solidify OpenVDB as an industry standard that drives continued innovation in visual effects.

Atlas's scene description and evaluation framework enables integration of multiple digital content creation tools into a coherent production pipeline. Its plug-in architecture and efficient evaluation engine provide a consistent representation from virtual production through to lighting.

Alembic's algorithms for storing and retrieving baked, time-sampled data enable high-efficiency caching across the digital production pipeline and sharing of scenes between facilities. As an open-source interchange library, Alembic has seen widespread adoption by major software vendors and production studios.