LogInAnother team joins the Unity family.
Following recent acquisitions of Weta Digital, SpeedTree, SyncSketch, Pixyz, and RestAR, Unity announced they also decided to buy Ziva Dynamics, a company with deep expertise and understanding of complex anatomical simulation and real-time artistry tools.
The two teams also revealed project Emma which is powered by state-of-the-art machine learning and is running in real-time in Unity. "Her model was trained with over 30 terabytes of unique 4D data using the ZRT Trainer, which enables her to emote over 72,000 trained shapes and achieve entirely novel face poses. This is deep tech for amazingly realistic animation and incredibly emotive performances; letting characters shine even in demanding real-time environments. And soon, it will be accessible to artists and creators of all levels," wrote Unity. This Emma project is said to leverage leading practices from machine learning, deep learning, and biomechanics.
By acquiring Ziva, Unity plans to democratize Ziva’s tools to allow artists, regardless of skill level, to easily and quickly create digital characters. They also want to bring Weta tools to real-time 3D through the cloud with the power of machine learning.
In case you don't know much about the Ziva team, its flagship software, Ziva VFX, is used to digitally replicate and couple the physics and materiality of soft tissue, such as muscles, fat, and skin, enabling artists to create lifelike CGI characters.
Ziva was co-founded by Academy Award-winner James Jacobs (CEO), a USC Viterbi School of Engineering professor and MIT TR35 winner, Jernej Barbic (CTO), and Chris Godsall, a Canadian businessman. Learn more about the team here and join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.