US Army Funds Help Win Academy Award for Tech Achievement

Earlier in December, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins and Wan-Chun Ma will be presented a Technical Achievement Award "for the invention of the Polarized Spherical Gradient Illumination facial appearance capture method", along with Xueming Yu "for the design and engineering of the Light Stage X capture system."

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30 November 2018, 05:08 GMT

And it appears that it was the US military that helped make this technology as it was developed at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies – a research institute that was established in 1999 as a DoD-sponsored research centre working in collaboration with the US Army Research Laboratory.

"Polarized Spherical Gradient Illumination was a breakthrough in facial capture technology allowing shape and reflectance capture of an actor’s face with sub-millimetre detail, enabling the faithful recreation of hero character faces. The Light Stage X structure was the foundation for all subsequent innovation and has been the keystone of the method’s evolution into a production system," the academy certificate states.

Creative geniuses behind digital humans and human-like characters in Hollywood blockbusters have U.S. Army-funded technology to thank for visual effects. Pictured here, engineers work on the Light Stage X capture system's recording process

The award is expected to be handed out on February 9, 2019 at the annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation in Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills.