Cubic Motion is a startup company that specializes in capturing hyper-realistic facial details and animations with a revolutionary camera and software platform. Today, Epic Games has revealed that they have bought the startup.
Epic Games has been known historically for releasing groundbreaking realism in graphics with its Unreal Engine and games like Fortnite. Epic Games has already worked with the startup company to create demos that feature actor’s facial movements and details on a digital character that are rendered by a game engine in real-time.
Cubic Motion created a product that it branded as “Persona” that bundles the software and the motion capture equipment in a complete hardware rig. The technology has already been used in top-selling games that have been released, including Spider-Man and God of War. Cubic Motion raised over $22 million to start its venture, but the terms of the deal with NorthEdge Capital weren’t revealed to the public.
The company will continue working with its existing customers after the acquisition by Epic Games, and it will increase integrations between its proprietary tech and the Unreal Engine.
Companies like Epic Games and Unity are doing a lot of business with large gaming companies, but this recent merge of technologies could attract industries outside of video games. The new technical developments will provide more realistic cinematic cut-scenes in games, and it should also offer similar appeal to movie studios that are increasingly utilizing digital techniques to render action and special effects. The ability to render cinematic scenes in real-time rather than frame by frame could be very appealing to the cinematic industry.
Epic also acquired a company last year, 3Lateral. This company specialized in creating realistic human avatars, and this is intended to integrate with efforts to create more realistic overall renderings of people in game environments and other digital formats. 3Lateral is a Serbian company that is known for creating amazingly realistic human characters. The team of 60 developers now joins Epic Games, and they will remain in Serbia to collaborate with other team members around the globe.
