Today Epic Games have announced the acquisition of Cubic Motion, a real-time facial animation capture company. Cubic Motion’s technology has been used by several of the most successful games of the current generation including SpiderMan and HellBlade, as well as powering several of Unreal Engines previous GDC and SIGRAPH presentations. This company is a good fit for Unreal Engine and 3Lateral, the 3D character creation company Epic acquired last January.
Details of the acquisition from the Unreal Engine blog:
Today we are thrilled to welcome Cubic Motion to the Epic Games family. Cubic Motion is a longtime Epic partner and a leading provider of automated performance-driven facial animation technology and services for video games, film, broadcast, and immersive experiences. By joining forces, our teams are solidifying our commitment to advancing the state of the art in the creation of believable digital humans for all Unreal Engine users.
Cubic Motion’s talent will work hand in hand with 3Lateral, developer of innovative technologies that enable digitization of human appearance and motion at unprecedented levels of realism. 3Lateral joined the Unreal Engine team in January 2019 to lead development of the state of the art in real-time capabilities for the creation of virtual humans and creatures.
“We are delighted to be joining Epic Games and look forward with excitement to this next chapter in our story,” said Cubic Motion CEO Dr. Gareth Edwards. “Together, we are uniquely positioned to push the boundaries of digital human technology, bringing ever more realism and immersion to all forms of visual entertainment.”
“Digital humans are not only the next frontier of content creation, but also the most complex endeavor in computer graphics. With Cubic Motion bringing their computer vision and animation technology and expertise to our digital human efforts, Epic along with our team at 3Lateral are one step closer to democratizing these capabilities for creators everywhere,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games.
Cubic Motion’s existing Persona facial capture technology is currently unimpacted by the acquisition. You can learn more about the deal in the video below.