Oscars 2024: Autodesk customers make magic behind the magic

The Creator took home the top prize at this year’s 22nd annual Visual Effects Society Awards, and is also one of this year’s Academy Award VFX nominees.

“Autodesk Maya played a key role in our effects work on The Creator,” said ILM Visual Effects Supervisor, Ian Comely. “It was used for robot, simulant, and vehicle modeling, rigging, and animation for the film. With multiple ILM locations contributing to the film, we also leveraged synchronized RV sessions for cross-site collaboration, annotation, and presentation to Director Gareth Edwards. Our ILM Production team on The Creator worked magic in Shotgrid, to stay on top of this evolving puzzle, and found efficiencies and savings to put the most ‘visual value’ on screen.”

Autodesk Maya plays key role for robot, simulant, and vehicle modeling, rigging, and animation in ‘The Creator’. © Disney. All Rights Reserved.

Framestore’s work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 nominated for “Best Visual Effects” spanned creatures, built digital environments, and multiple variants of fan favorite, Rocket Raccoon.

“Autodesk’s tools play an important role at every stage of our pipeline. Maya acts as our primary platform for modeling, rigging, animation, and serves as the bridge for rendering in our proprietary renderer Freak, equipping us with the necessary tools to bring our CG characters to life,” said Alexis Wajsbrot, VFX Supervisor on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3. “Maya was instrumental in the creation of multiple variants of Rocket Raccoon; its flexible rigging and animation tools allowed us to create diverse iterations of the character, each with its own unique personality and expressions. This was key to delivering Rocket’s powerful performances during the film’s emotionally charged sequences that saw audiences reaching for their tissues.”

Multiple variants of fan-favorite Rocket Raccoon were created with Autodesk Maya, each with unique personality.

And Maya is also utilized throughout the pipeline by Wētā FX on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
“Our Assets and Motion teams, such as Modeling, Motion, Creatures, and Layout, are the primary users,” said Weta CTO, Kimball Thurston. “We believe in having an integrated approach from virtual production to post-production, so artists from VAD and Optical, who work with on-set data, to our Lighting team making last-second edits all use Maya and other Autodesk tools to help produce the rich scenes you see in our work.”

Rich scenes in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ made possible with Autodesk Maya.

As we look forward to the Oscars with those nominated for the industry’s most prestigious awards, we’re proud to be a part of it, and celebrate the people and technology bringing films to life.

With its industry cloud for Media & Entertainment, Autodesk is shaping the future of film and animation, and working to connect every stage of the production lifecycle, revolutionizing the way data, workflows, and teams are managed. Autodesk Flow is unlocking new opportunities for innovation and creativity, addressing hurdles that arise as productions grow in scope and complexity.

Beyond the silver screen, Autodesk is a trusted technology partner to the design and make industries and its software is used by architects, engineers, students, and more, inspiring creativity and innovation that is helping to make a better world.