The 2007 technical achievement award granted by the Academy of the motion picture Arts and Sciences of Hollywood and which is, indeed, an Oscar®, goes to the Spanish company Next Limit Technologies.
This is the thirteenth Oscar® that goes to Spain in the History, and the second technical achievement award. The full list of Spanish Oscar® winners is:
1. 1969 Juan de la Cierva (for research on the optical stabilizer Dynalens) – technical achievement
2. 1970 Gil Parrondo (Best Art Direction for ‘Patton’)
3. 1970 Antonio Mateos (Best Scenario for ‘Patton’)
4. 1971 Gil Parrondo (Best Art Direction for ‘Nicolás y Alejandra’)
5. 1971 Antonio Cánovas del Castillo & Yvonne Blake (Best Costume Design for ‘Nicolás y Alejandra’)
6. 1972 Luis Buñuel (Best Foreign Film for ‘El discreto encanto de la burguesía’)
7. 1978 Néstor Almendros (Best Cinematography for ‘Días de cielo’)
8. 1982 José Luis Garci (Best Foreign Film for ‘Volver a empezar’)
9. 1993 Fernando Trueba (Best Foreign Film for ‘Belle epoque’)
10. 1999 Pedro Almodóvar (Best Foreign Film for ‘Todo sobre mi madre’)
11. 2002 Pedro Almodóvar (Best Script for ‘Hable con ella’)
12. 2005 Alejandro Amenábar (Best Foreign Film for ‘Mar Adentro’)
13. 2008 Víctor González, Ignacio Vargas and Ángel Tena, from Next Limit Technologies (for the creation of the software RealFlow of fluid simulation for 3D animation)
NextLimit Technologies, founded by Víctor González and Ignacio Vargas in 1998, this award is one of the prestigious technology Oscars® usually awarded to non Spanish companies.
Today they are an international enterprise operating globally (Europe, United States, Japan & New Zealand). Their technology is based on three products: RealFlow, a fluid and phisics simulation software for film and television markets; Maxwell Render, used for light simulation in architecture and industrial design, and Xflow, a fluid and structure simulator for engineering markets.
Next Limit is a team of 29 people: mathematicians, designers, phisicists and engineers. Previously has received relevant awards like the double Award IST (Information Society of Technology) to RealFlow and Maxwell in 2006 –recognized as the European Oscar® to innovation; the award Exportación Cámara de Comercio year 1999; the 2nd innovative project of programa Avanza from the Ministry of Industry of Spain 2006 or the CGW Award (innovation award from the magazine Computer Graphics World).
Nowadays, Next Limit has only a 7% of sales of licenses in Spain, because the other 93% are the 7,000 licenses sold in the USA, the rest of Europe (UK, Italy, France, Germany), Japan and New Zealand. Among their customers there are IBM, Ford, Audi, Volkswagen, Seat, BBC, NASA, Adidas or Motorola Inc.
However, regarding Hollywood, NextLimit Technologies has achieved the most important award: the recognition of the visual effects companies which are already their customers (Digital Domain, Disney, Pixar, Weta Digital, Blur, Mill Film, Square and many others).
Their first job for the movie industry was Lost in Space, where RF was used to create the stellar explosions. Since then, they have been present with their simulation software Realflow in films like The lord of the rings: The return of the king (for the lava flow of Mount Destiny); Ice Age 2; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Chicken Little; 300; Poseidon; Matrix; Final Fantasy; X-Men 3; The Da Vinci Code and Primeval, among others.
Congratulations to Victor, Ignacio and all the team!