NVIDIA, the Santa Clara-based American technology company, has been honored with the Scientific and Technical Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences through its three researchers, Essex Edwards, Fabrice Rousselle, and Timo Aila. It has been given to acknowledge their groundbreaking contributions to the film industry. 

These researchers are renowned for their research and innovation in simulation, denoising, and rendering, which have helped shape the prospects of the visual storytelling industry. Their innovations have enabled filmmakers to create a breathtaking and immersive experience in the films. 

Ziva VFX Bringing Life-like Simulation on the Screen

Essex Edwards, one among the 3 NVIDIA researchers, received a Technical Achievement Award, alongside James Jacobs, Jernej Barbic, Crawford Doran, and Andrew van Straten, for his design and development of Ziva VFX. This groundbreaking technology allows filmmakers to construct and simulate human muscles, fat, fascia, and skin for digital characters with an intuitive and physics-based approach.

It comes with an artist-friendly interface that transforms how studios bring photorealistic and animated characters to the big screen and beyond.

Register for our upcoming tech event from 19th to 21st March at: IoT India Expo 2025: Pioneering the Future of Connectivity

Disney ML Denoiser

Fabrice Rousselle, one among the 3 NVIDIA researchers, has been honored with a Scientific and Engineering Award, alongside Thijs Vogels, David Adler, Gerhard Röthlin, and Mark Meyer, for his work on Disney’s ML Denoiser. This groundbreaking technology brought an enormously innovative kernel-predicting convolutional network into the VFX and visuals game. This further ensured a temporal stability in rendered images, imparting high-quality rendering to the graphics generated.

Initially developed to support only animated films, this breakthrough technology has gradually become an essential tool in live-action visual effects and high-end rendering workflows.

Also read about NVIDIA's latest innovation at: Project Digits: Nvidia unveils $3,000 personal AI supercomputer for developers

Intel Open Image Denoise

Timo Aila, last of the 3 NVIDIA researchers, has been honored with a Technical Achievement Award, alongside Attila T. Áfra, for his pioneering contributions to AI image denoising. This technology preserves the fine details while significantly reducing noise and unwanted elements from the image/visual. It has become one of the vital components in real-time and offline rendering across the industry.

In conclusion, NVIDIA, through its researchers, has secured three Academy Awards in the Scientific and Technical category, highlighting its commitment to groundbreaking R&D and innovation in the tech industry. This achievement reinforces NVIDIA’s influence in advancing technology for the film sector. The awards ceremony is set to take place on Tuesday, April 29, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.