Friedrichsdorf, Germany – March 30, 2022 – Maxon, developer of high-quality creative tools for visual effects artists, congratulates Paul Lambert on winning the 2022 ACADEMY AWARD® for Best Visual Effects for the film Dune, beating out a number of impressive competitors including Spiderman: No Way Home and Free Guy. Paul also took home a Special Visual Effects BAFTA Award for his work on the film at the awards ceremony on 13 March 2022. According to Paul Lambert, it was one of his best experience in post-production, revolving around Redshift tool, which helped out to bring magic to reality.

 

Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel was long considered impossible to adapt because he wanted to ground it in reality – so the alien technology in Denis Villeneuve’s approach had to seem plausible. This made it even more complicated for Lambert to bring the world of Dune to the screen. This was particularly evident in a scene where Timothée Chalamet’s character seeks shelter in a holographic bush. Since it would have been too difficult and too costly to create a CG shot of the actor up close, Lambert opted to shoot the scene with real special effects, which were refined in post-production to create an unprecedented final look. To this end, Lambert brought in Wylie Co. visual effects for post-production.

 

Key to this effect was Maxon’s GPU-accelerated renderer Redshift. Holograms are notoriously difficult to work with in a VFX pipeline due to their visual and technical complexity. Redshift gave Lambert and the Wylie Co. team the power they needed to bring the preliminary edit up to a much higher standard in a very short time and present it to Villeneuve. The result was a footage that was almost ready for production, giving the team a much more interactive and efficient feedback process for quick and easy decision making.
The team was able to interact with Redshift assets immediately and test them at a much higher resolution, which was a significant contribution to the quality, coherence and timeline of post-production workflow.

 

Maxon CEO David McGavran says that it’s always exciting when Maxon tools are used to create groundbreaking visual effects that captivate the world. But it’s even more exciting when the artists behind them are recognized with the most prestigious awards in the film industry.

Stay tuned for more products from Maxon.

 

Credits: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures