Unity, maker of the popular 3D engine of the same name, has announced that it is purchasing Weta Digital, Peter Jackson’s visual effects studio known for its frenzy in films including Planet Of The Apes, Lord Of The Rings, Avatar and The Suicide Squad. They plan to bring Weta’s tools to Unity developers, which is a sizable arsenal to offer in the arms race with the Unreal Engine.
Notice explains that Unity has “entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weta Digital, specifically the award-winning artist tools, core pipeline, intellectual property, and technical talent”. Weta Digital’s VFX service teams will operate individually as WetaFX. Unity says it plans to “enable these tools in the cloud and make sure they easily integrate with the workflows artists already use,” working with them in tools like Maya as well. like passing stuff into the Unity engine. If you’re working with Unity yourself, yes, you’ll still be waiting for specifics on how all of this will actually work.
They will pay $1.625 billion through a combination of cash and stock.
Unity’s announcement details the tools Weta is bringing to the table. They cover technology including renderers, simulated water and canvas, capture of facial expressions, hair and fur, muscles and skins, feathers, plants, terrain, biomes, smoke and fire simulations, live previews of CG mixing and camera footage, production workflows, and more. Lots of fanciness.
Marc Whitten, general manager of Unity Create Solutions, said: “Weta Digital’s unifying tools and incredible scientists and technologists will advance our mission of delivering to creators content easy-to-use and high-performance tools to make their vision a reality”. “The system was developed with the artist first in mind and the result is an incredible set of tools capable of achieving the pinnacle of visual effects (VFX) trained on a consistent schedule. of hundreds of film and television productions.”
Unfair unity has a reputation for being mean and evil. I think it largely stems from the way games built into the free version will force the Unity splash screen to be displayed on startup, while the developers who have paid for it can (and will) ) disable that. This means that Unity is associated with indie games that are often less luxurious and polished than commercial releases. Just to be clear, I love that Unity has enabled a lot of geek projects and walking simulators, but a lot of people are, you know, fussy babies.
But Unity can make ‘fancy’ games, of course it can, you just might know you haven’t played them. Unity games in recent years include Pokémon Unite, Subnautica, GFTO, Fall Guys, Outer Wilds, Hollow Knight, Valheim, Desperados 3, Legends Of Runeterra, Untitled Goose Game, BattleTech, Cuphead, Yooka-Laylee, Hearthstone and Firewatch. The company has also made an effort to show their fans with a series of short film. Buying Weta Digital feels a bit like saying, “Oh my god, please shut up.”
Oh, I suppose I should mention that because 2021 is a worse version of 2007, Unity’s announcement also goes on to use Weta’s tools to “unlock the full potential of the metaverse” and blah blah blah.
