Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 12, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The winners of the cross-state visual-effects competition organised by the federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg have been announced. The prizes were presented yesterday during the NEXT10 conference at Station am Gleisdreieck.
The first prize, worth EUR 5,000, went to the Berlin/Brandenburg companies Exozet Berlin GmbH/Exozet Effects GmbH for a collaborative project – the Virtual Environment Engine called “Aurora 2.0”. Aurora 2.0 makes it possible to see and control visual environments and weather effects in real time while still on the film set.
Second prize (EUR 3,000) went to the Berlin company brainpets for developing a software application for non-photorealistic rendering. The third prize, worth EUR 2,000, went to Cinemakers Technology for developing a key technology called “Daily Animated Fiction” – it enables the production of a daily animated TV series.
A special prize of EUR 1,000 went to students at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg for “ThermaKey”, an application that combines an infrared camera with a conventional camera, making it easier to separate actors from the background during postproduction.
Further projects, such as the establishment of Brave New World Studios – a centre for virtual worlds, games, postproduction, electronic storyboarding, machinima, motion capturing and so on – by the Berlin Institute for Digital Communication L4, received certificates.
“With this competition, we want to strengthen the location’s capacity for innovation, help ensure that more visual effects are produced in the capital region, bring together new cooperation partners and provide targeted support for the best projects through prize money and further funding,” explained Berlin Senator for Economics Harald Wolf. “Competitions provide impetus and ideally complement our funding strategies.”
The VFX competition was launched in autumn 2009 by the states – represented by the Project Future state initiative, the Brandenburg Ministry of Economics and ZAB. It sought project proposals for innovative applications, prototypes and technologies in the field of visual effects.
From twelve project submissions, both collaborative and individual projects, a high-calibre jury selected the most innovative visual-effects projects in the capital region. The range extended from stereoscopy and games projects, real-time applications for iPhone/iPad and virtual-environment engines to a software application for non-photorealistic rendering.