3dFestival's International 3D Award Winners

GlobE 59 writes "3D Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark announced the winners of their 1st Annual International 3DAwards this Friday (9/5). Take a look at the nominees and winners here! 3D Festival, Game Developers World and Architectural Visualization Conference is a joint conference/expo combining interests in 3D-graphics and visualization."

Comments

Maybe one day

[B3ryllium]

They'll be able to render the entire planet!

I've always wanted to have a program to make those fun globe-y effects that tv shows use :)

Re:Maybe one day

[CowboyBob500]

It's called Rapid World Modelling and is a current PhD running at my old university.

Bob

Re:Maybe one day

[B3ryllium]

Dangit, I could have really used something like that in 1996, when I had to use an animated gif that I created from website-based stills to make the intro credits for a tv show.

I had the vision, but lacked the tools :(

Re:Maybe one day

[CausticWindow]

they'll render it useless, I tell you.

Re:Maybe one day

[B3ryllium]

One of these days, alice, one of these days - TO THE MOON!

Re:Maybe one day

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's imaginary planets that'll keep you entertained, they call it MojoWorld. There's a free version called the Transporter with which you can render still frames, QTVRs and movies of planets made by other folks and posted on the net. Because the planets are procedurally generated, the planet files are absurdly small. The full Generator product for creating planets is quite reasonably priced for what it is.

Check this article in Millimeter magazine about various 3d world creation tools... They say of MojoWorld:

Let me begin with the advice that anyone interested in computer graphics technology and its application to the imagination should really get ahold of this product. MojoWorld is as much a vision, dream, and concept of the entertainment future as it is a landscape generation application.

Re:Maybe one day

[LiquidCoooled]

Theres an Online virtual game called There!
it uses a rendering engine which allows the effect you speak of - its great fun and the quality is good as well.
Also - the game Black & White was also in a similar format.

Re:Maybe one day

[ThroughYourEyes]

Bah, close enough. ;)

Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[btakita]

Very good choice in my book.
Of course, I havn't seen too many feature 3d animated movies.

Anybody else have any movies that should have been on the list of nominees?

Anybody else want a different movie to win?

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[B3ryllium]

Well, I don't know if it would count, but have you heard of a little flick called "Shrek"? :)

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[btakita]

Yes Shrek was very nice, but from two years ago I believe.

I'm talking about this past year.

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[B3ryllium]

Okay. What about Ice Age?

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[btakita]

I never saw it. Just wanted to see what people thought. Maybe find a good movie to rent.

The nominees are:
- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, DreamWorks, USA
- Spider-Man, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
- Stuart Little 2, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
- Star Wars Episode II, Industrial Light & Magic, USA
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Chamber Sequence, Framestore CFC, UK
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Weta Digital, New Zealand

None of them are cartoons. I didn't see any category for a full length cartoon feature. That means, either the 3d awards committee didn't consider cartoons or didn't think they were as good as the movies.

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[btakita]

My bad...Spirit is a cartoon.

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[B3ryllium]

it had a few nominations

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[btakita]

Sweet...I'll check it out.

Did you like it?

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[Dynedain]

Their criteria for judging was the quality/realism of the 3D rendering/animation....Shrek, while an excellent story, is not the best in terms of CG work...even amongst CG cartoons (Monsters Inc or Ice Age both outshine it in this regard)

Re:Lord of the Rings -- Feature Film Winner

[B3ryllium]

Of course I liked it, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting on Slashdot posting about it.

(Wait, that logic might not work. But yes, I liked it.)

It had Dennis Leary! :)

(If you want a really fun "real" movie, check out "The Ref")

Breath of fresh air...

[johny_qst]

Excellent article... glad to see it made it to the front page. I hope more will follow shortly. If /. covered advances in 3d modelling/rendering software as much as the advances in window managers I would be a happy /.er

Additional award

[broothal]

For a lot of people, 3D graphics and animation is "something you make in a program like 3D studio". However, there are a great deal of innovation and research going on "behind the scenes".

The math of 3D is both beautiful and complex. Remember, there's a big difference between 3D used in, for instance, a 3D architecture model of a bridge and a computer game. The architecht wants a precise model - the computer game will trade reality for speed of rendering.

The point is, new algorithms and methods are invented all the time. It takes a lot of hard work to develop these algorithms.

My suggestion is a pure scientific awards for "developing an algorithm or method that improves the speed or quality of 3D rendering".

How about it?

Re:Additional award

[Anonymous Coward]

SIGGRAPH (The ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Graphics, etc) kind of performs some of this function. Not quite so glitzy, but with most of the major players who supported the 3D awards, and more besides.

Re:Additional award

[while(true)]

3D festival is not really geared towards the scientific part of 3D graphics. Look atSIGGRAPH (and numerous other conferences) to take care of that part.

Re:Additional award

[malducin]

Not to mention also the VES (Visual Effects Society, kinda like other film guilds) awards:

VES Awards
VES Awards photos

Re:Additional award

[podperson]

There was an award for that category...

It was won by the University of Tokya and Sega for a highly technical character animation innovation.

ILM vs. WETA digital

[xynopsis]

Nominees
- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, DreamWorks, USA
- Spider-Man, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA - Stuart Little 2, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
- Star Wars Episode II, Industrial Light & Magic, USA
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Chamber Sequence, Framestore CFC, UK
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Weta Digital, New Zealand

Winner Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Weta Digital, New Zealand

Conclusion: ILM used to be the high-end best CG studio around. Since Jurassic Park, ILM was the leader in film computer graphics. Now it seems newcomer WETA is stealing the show!. Credit seems to go to Massive, a tool for the creation of artificial ecologies, which is developed on Irix, and now ported to Linux. Using this tool, WETA is creating battle scenes that has 100,000 characters interacting with each other in battle...this includes fighting, clothing animation, blood, behaviour, and death. Nothing that ILM has produced has come close to that. IMO, EPII battle scenes felt cheesy.

Re:ILM vs. WETA digital

[malducin]

Sigh, leave it to fanboyism to make statements like that. I wonder wy people can't separate the story/direction from the VFX when doing statements like that. It's very easy to take cheap shots but the same could be said the other way around.

ILM is still a leader. They got around one of the biggest R&D dept. besides being the biggest VFX studio around. They have won countless of Sci-Tech awards, pioneered work on cloth dynamics, water dynamics, muscle systems, etc. They are regularly featured in industry magazines such as Cinefex, CGW, American Cinematographer and Millimeter. They participate in countless event including SIGGRAPH, this year they present a paper on fluid simulations, plus a special session and participate in the RenderMan course plus a Maya Masterclass and we'll see what else, plus their R&D reel was selected for the Electronic Theatre. They have 2 sessions on VES plus many other festivals around the world.

BTW, Weta doesn't own Massive, though it was developed for them in the first place. They do deserve much kudos but also many studios like ILM, DD, Imageworks, ESC, and the list goes on. You might want to read this for a bit more perspective:

Summer tentpoles rush to wrap effects work

Man I wish this mentality of destroy all competition calms down after both LOTR and the Matrix films are done with.

Text incase of Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys,

It's midnight here. We're all going to get some booze - the 3D Awards was INCREDIBLE. We'll have photos and more tomorrow. But here's the winners list:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday 9 May 2003

Winners Announced for the 1st Annual International 3D Awards

Copenhagen, Denmark - The International 3D Awards Committee is pleased to announce the final list of winners for the 1st Annnual International 3D Awards, proudly sponsored by HP, NVIDIA and Alias|Wavefront. The ceremony was held on the evening of Friday 9th May 2003, at Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark running in conjunction with the 3D Festival 2003. Winners present received the Digital Hero trophy, hand sculpted by Dan Platt.

Feature Film VFX
The award for Best 3D Visual Effects for a Feature Film honors outstanding visual effects production used in a feature film. Entries were judged based on the criteria of Originality & Creativity, Design & Aesthetics and Technical Excellence.

Nominees
- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, DreamWorks, USA
- Spider-Man, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
- Stuart Little 2, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
- Star Wars Episode II, Industrial Light & Magic, USA
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Chamber Sequence, Framestore CFC, UK
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Weta Digital, New Zealand

Winner
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Weta Digital, New Zealand

Television VFX
The award for Best 3D Visual Effects for Television honors outstanding use of 3D visual effects for a television-based production. Entries were judged based on the criteria of Originality & Creativity, Design & Aesthetics and Technical Excellence.

Nominees
- Wild Weather for BBC One, The Moving Picture Company, UK
- Dinotopia (mini-series), Framestore CFC, UK
- The Giant Claw/Land of Giants, Framestore CFC, UK
- The Future is Wild, 422 Ltd, UK

Winner
Dinotopia (mini-series), Framestore CFC, UK
Commercials
The award for Best 3D in a Commercial is for outstanding use of 3D in a television or cinema commercial, fully CG or containing key 3D elements. Entries were judged based on the criteria of Originality & Creativity, Design & Aesthetics and Technical Excellence.

Nominees
- Levi's Stampede, The Mill, UK
- Nintendo, La Maison, France
- Levi's Odyssey, Framestore CFC, UK
- X-Box Mosquito, Framestore CFC, UK
- Carl and Ray: Kung Fu, Tippett Studio, USA
- Murphy's Peanut, The Mill, UK

Winner
Carl and Ray: Kung Fu, Tippett Studio, USA

Music Videos
The award for Best 3D in a Music Video is for outstanding use of 3D (composited with live action or fully animated) in a music video. Entries were judged based on the criteria of Originality & Creativity, Design & Aesthetics and Technical Excellence.

Nominees
- Nature is Ancient (Bjork), Glassworks Post Productions Ltd., UK
- Respire (Mickey 3D), André Bessy, Jerome Combe, Stéphane Hamache, Eric Prebende and Sylvain Tardiveau, France
- Miss Lucifer (Primal Scream), The Moving Picture Company, UK
- Courage, for Cartoon Network, FilmTecknarna Animation AB, Sweden
- Use Yur Imagination, Oddworld Inhabitants, USA

Winner
Nature is Ancient (Bjork), Glassworks Post Productions Ltd., UK

Short Films
The award for Best 3D Short Film honors an outstanding 3D-animated short film with no restrictions on commercial, studio or independent productions. Entries were judged based on the criteria of Originality & Creativity, Design & Aesthetics, Workmanship & Technical Excellence, Storytelling and Cinematography.

Nominees
- Show & Tell, Kapow Pictures, Australia
- The ChubbChubbs, Sony Pictures Imageworks, USA
- Cane Toad, Andrew Silke and David Clayton, Australia
- Mike's New Car, Pixar Animation Studios, USA
- Polar Bears 'Gary's Fall', Passion Pictures, UK

Winner
Show & Tell, Kapow Pictures, Australia

Independent An

These shorts and unknown productions...

[antdude]

Will we be able to see them online?

Re:These shorts and unknown productions...

[s3if3R]

Well, Shelley Page from Dreamworks would be my bet. She organized that part of the festival, and seemed really devoted to it. Also, as far as I understood from the Awards, there will be some sort of trailers or contact info for the producers on the page.
This is also, however, an interesting question more generally. It is always hard to get hold of independent productions. In lue of the fact that most independent producers - myself included - aren't in for big money grabs, it is basically strictly a distributional problem. I am currently developing an online AV archive solution, which I hope I will be able to get in the independent pipeline state of mind. We'll see.

Re:These shorts and unknown productions...

[Chainsaw76]

Here is the link to Tim Tom the winner of the student Animation catagory.

tim tom

(No affiliation, I just stumbled across the link.)

-Jason

Re:These shorts and unknown productions...

[antdude]

Chainsaw76: Thanks! :)

Re:These shorts and unknown productions...

[Quikah]

Streaming Bjork video is available from here (links at the bottom). Doesn't seem to work for me though, probably due to my sucky PC at work.

Re:These shorts and unknown productions...

[antdude]

Quikah: Thanks. It doesn't seem to work for me at work as well. :(

Like most "game" awards...

[Anonymous Coward]

...this one was obviously crap.

The one for gaming cinematics. Dead To Rights? PRIMAL?!?

I'm sure if people did a list of the top 100 graphics (it said both pre-rendered and realtime), those two games MAY be on it.

Reminds me of all of the *game of the year* games like Myst and such seem to "win." Why can't we have an actual, not to mention ACCURATE, award for gaming developers?

Re:Like most "game" awards...

[s3if3R]

Well, interesting as your comment may be, it would be interesting to see what games you think would be in the top ten - obviously you have some really excellent candidates.... or?

Just as a short comment, excellence in 3D doesn't stop at the visual. It contains physics, lighting, animation, creating the feeling of life, novelty... so even though I'm sure many won't find there favorite game on that list, I feel it's a pretty decent representation. Still, it would be interesting to hear other views on the subject.

More to be done

[photon_chac]

IMO, there are three major challenges to the realization of virtual reality.

1) Sound - well , almost done
2) Visual - on its way , see no end yet.
3) Sense - AFAIK , in an ignored state , mostly if not completely

( say u wanna TASTE and SMELL simulation also )

No realtime...

[s3if3R]

Yes, interesting discussion, definetaly. However, there was *no* real-time category at the awards - a problem we later discussed with the organizers. Hopefully next year will feature real-time.

Also, *trivia* there's an expansion for the gamecube coming out - a little box that holds cards which come with different games - producing smell :-) Seems like been-there-tried-that-20-years-ago-didn't-work, but still, Kojima is allegedly going to use it in Metal Gear Solid 3 - Snake Eater. Who knows. Maybe the world is ready for the smell of... snakes? :-)

what is a fan

[s3if3R]

Interesting point, however sort of off-target. Yes, of course ILM is obviously a market-leading institution, excelling in research and press coverage. They produce many wonderful effects by the minute. I'd still, though, would like to point to a problem that Rob Coleman (ILM) brought up at the festival: They are constantly competing with the smaller, more flexible studios. Mr. Lucas comes in and goes "well, I saw this effect in that BBC show by Framestore CFC - it looks great, and they did it for XXX $ in YYY months. Why does it take you guys triple that time and quadruple that cost?" The smaller companies can move faster into newer technology. When a company like ILM switches to e.g Maya, it takes them a *lot* of license-money, training money and *time* out of the production pipeline. A smaller company makes that transition without a flinch. ILM has cutting-edge research, but it is a cumbersome movement of the Beast to get it into production. Giving WETA the credit the commentator did is not "fanboyism". It *is* remarkable that they pulled it off. And, people need to be reminded that BIG doesn't always equal BEST, and groundbreking research doesn't always equal groundbreaking production *coughstarwars* *cough*. Yes, the article you posted has very interesting points - thank you - in showing the dangers of smaller studios advancing beyond their capacity. However, I believe that WETA has proven very capable of just that feat. But that's just my five cents.

I miss going to 3D Festival

[Mindjiver]

I went there the last year it was held i Malmö and the first year it was in Köpenhamn. Absolutley the coolest thing I ever been to. Partying with prominent CG-people. At the after-party in Köpenhamn Victor Navone was pretty wasted and was dancing in his own world.

Pretty realistic!

[Luguber123]

http://www.3dfestival.com/

The 'Syd Mead' rendering seems allmost real, one have to wonder why it was not used instead of Gollum :)

bannermania

[GlobE 59]

Sorry ppl! that banner is not to be affiliated with me or my oppinions in anyway... scary to see your name right next a m$ commercial...

GBA to be kept in dark places

[s3if3R]

Yup, Kojima is making "Boktai" for GBA, for which a light sensor comes installed in the cassette. A pretty picture: http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/news/02/ 17/boktai/boktai_screen009.jpg

But those aren't 3D!

[Aidtopia]

When I saw the title of this article, I got very excited. You see, I love 3D movies. But, as fans of stereoscopy often are, I was disappointed that these were really 2.5D presentations: 3D models with all of the binocular beauty flattened out of them. Its like those bastards who dubbed 24-bit color "true color". Yeah, right.

Where are the awards for stereoscopic films?