Recently, Unity, the world's leading interactive real-time 3D content creation and operation platform, announced the acquisition of Ziva Dynamics, a Canadian developer of virtual character software, to expand its suite of real-time character creation tools.
Ziva Dynamics is a virtual character software company founded in 2015 and headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, co-founded by Chris Godsall, James Jacobs and Jernej Barbic to enable character creation and human body simulation. Ziva technology has been used in several game, film, and television projects, including Game of Thrones, Godzilla vs. King Kong, and Sena's Legend: Hellblade II.
Ziva Dynamics has been described by Unity as a "leader in complex simulation and morphing, machine learning, and real-time character creation," and is Unity's latest acquisition of visual effects studios following its high-profile acquisition of Weta Digital. Unity announced the deal using a digital man named Emma created by Ziva, whose model was trained using more than 30tB of unique 4D data and capable of using more than 72,000 trained shapes to express emotions.
Unity said: "This esoteric technology can make highly realistic animations and extremely emotional facial performances, making characters shine even in demanding real-time environments. In the near future, it will be available to artists and creators of all levels. Providing this fidelity in real time is groundbreaking, as Emma says, the result of cutting-edge technologies that leverage leading practices in machine learning, deep learning, and biomechanics. It fundamentally changed the way people made characters. Ziva's technology can be used to drive everything that can be deformed in real time: the human body, creatures, clothes, whether the style is realistic or exaggerated, whether the fidelity is high or low. ”
After the transaction was completed, Unity said that Ziva will help speed up the development of real-time 3D for cloud-based Weta tools through the power of machine learning. Unity also intends to use Ziva's technology to create more accessible, trusted digital characters, claiming that the company's machine learning technology will enable cloud-based authoring, ultimately simplifying production and reducing costs.