Academy Award for Kiwi

Weta worker Mark Sagar has won an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award. Photo / Martin Sykes

A system which helps bring actors' digital doubles to life has earned New Zealander Mark Sagar an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award.

The Weta Digital worker will receive a plaque featuring the coveted Oscar statuette at a formal dinner on February 20 - two weeks before the Oscars ceremony.

Sagar was one of four men behind a light stage capture device and image-based facial rendering system and each will receive an award.

The stage was created by Paul Debevec, a professor at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, and uses a number of spinning strobe lights to illuminate an actor from all angles, The Dominion Post reported.

With help from Sagar, John Monos (Sony pictures), and Tim Hawkins (LightStage), a system was created to take the images from the stage and use it when lighting and animating the faces of digitally created characters, boosting realism.

Sagar moved to Weta after working on the film Spider-Man 2 where the technology was used to create doubles for Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man) and Alfred Molina (Doctor Octopus).

"You couldn't tell it's not real. There's no end to what you can bring to life," he told the newspaper.

It has since been used in a raft of big budget films, including Weta productions King Kong and Avatar.

- NZPA