Marvelous Designer has become the latest CG application to be recognized at the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony. This software enables artists to create digital clothing using a workflow that mimics the process of making physical garments by stitching virtual 2D patterns and draping fabric on 3D models.
Originally oriented towards the cosplay community, Marvelous Designer was first applied in the film industry by Weta Digital, which used it for the 2011 animated film "The Adventures of Tintin." Since then, it has been widely used in animation and VFX films, including "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Avengers: Infinity War."
Founder of CLO Virtual Fashion, Jaden Oh, and the software he helped create, the award-winning Sci-Tech tool for 3D clothing design, Marvelous Designer, have been honored.
Unusually for a Sci-Tech Academy Award, the honor went to an individual—Jaden Oh, who is a co-founder of Marvelous Designer's developer, CLO Virtual Fashion. Jaden Oh wrote the initial prototype of the software while still in school and later founded CLO Virtual Fashion after earning a Ph.D. from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The Academy recognizes his leadership role in guiding the team of engineers and UX designers at CLO Virtual Fashion to "enhance the quality of appearance and operation in creating a digital wardrobe."
The short film "Piper," released in 2016 by Pixar, became the first film created using a workflow based on Universal Scene Description (USD). Currently, USD is an industry standard for exchanging complex scene data.
Other Academy Awards were presented to the creators of two key open standards used in modern VFX and animation pipelines: Universal Scene Description (USD) and OpenVDB. In the case of USD, the award went to five Pixar employees, including the team lead and chief architect, Sebastian Grassia. Developed in-house by the animation studio and open-sourced in 2016, USD was conceived as a standard format for exchanging complex scene data between applications.
Currently, it is supported by major applications used in VFX and animation production, including both proprietary software and popular tools like Houdini and Maya. The Academy describes USD as the "first open-source scene description framework capable of encompassing the entire production process," and its "widespread adoption has made it the de facto standard for exchanging 3D scenes throughout the film industry." The development of USD is now overseen by the Alliance for OpenUSD, a consortium of technology giants aiming to make USD an ISO-ratified standard across various industries.
Commercial for OpenVDB. Developed at DreamWorks Animation, the volumetric data format is now one of the key industry technologies overseen by the Academy Software Foundation.
Regarding OpenVDB, the Academy Award went to its chief creator and architect, Ken Museth, and two former DreamWorks Animation employees, Peter Cucksee and Michael Alden. Developed at DreamWorks and released to open source in 2012, the volumetric data format is now widely supported in VFX software, being part of the VFX Reference Platform.
In the Academy's statement, OpenVDB is described as a standard for "efficiently representing complex volumetric effects, such as water, fire, and smoke." This is the second Scientific and Technical Award for OpenVDB: in 2015, the same trio of developers received an Academy Certificate. Additionally, one of this year's certificates went to developers responsible for expanding the functionality of OpenVDB, including Jeff Lait, Senior Mathematician at SideFX, the developer of Houdini.
Another award was given to the creators of another, slightly older data exchange standard - Alembic, among them Lucas Miller, Chief Engineer at Sony Pictures Imageworks, and former Lead TD at Industrial Light & Magic, Christopher Horvat. Developed at Imageworks and ILM in 2011 and becoming part of the VFX Reference Platform, Alembic is widely used for exchanging modeling, baking, and animation data between applications. The Academy notes its "highly efficient caching" of baked data "across the entire digital production pipeline."
Other Scientific and Technical Awards in 2024 were granted to developers of technologies used in theatrical laser projection systems and the Dolby Atmos immersive sound system.