Epic Games has just acquired Cubic Motion, the company is renowned for creating one of the best facial animation technique on the industry. Cubic Motion’s technology has allowed Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and God of War deliver eye catching facial expressions. “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” Said Epic Games at the announcement of the acquisition.
Cubic Motion’s talent will work with 3Lateral, developer of innovative technologies that enable digitization of human appearance and motion at unprecedented levels of realism. 3Lateral was recently acquired by Epic Games and will 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.
“Facial animation that conveys the slightest nuance of human expression is essential to crossing the uncanny valley. We believe that holistically combining Epic’s Unreal Engine with 3Lateral’s facial rig creation and Cubic Motion’s solving technology is the only way to answer this challenge, and ultimately, to reach the pinnacle of digital human artistry with Unreal Engine,” said Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri.
With Cubic Motion acquisition, Epic Games has made a big and necessary step ahead of next generation games, their technology will be implemented into Unreal Engine, this would greatly improve the realistic depiction of the human emotion, developers will now have more room for creativity.
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