Ziva had already been involved in a number of creations including Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and Godzilla vs. The most notable of these is in its acquisition of Ziva, announced only two months after Weta came on board. Weta’s tools will obviously enhance this element, but there are other ways that Unity has and is looking to bolster its offering. The inclusion of Ziva's tools into Unity offers powerful next-gen real time animation features (Image credit: Unity Technologies)Īnother area of content creation that has seen a sustained and concerted investment is around digital humans. Digital humans are now easier to create in Unity The promise of this library increasing as Weta FX creates more content is particularly exciting. Alongside these tools, artists will also gain access to a huge asset library, including environments, humans, objects, materials and more. This approach will put the power in the hands of the artists as they’ll be able to pick and choose the tools that work for them. The intention seems to be to make them available in the cloud, so artists can utilise them directly inside their preferred digital content creation (DCC) tools such as Maya, Houdini and others. It will be interesting to see how these tools are made available, especially because some of them seem in direct competition to tools already available in Unity or Ziva. These tools cover the whole digital workflow and put Unity in an extremely strong position compared to its competitors and easily comparable to the best 3D modelling software. Alongside Lumberjack and Totara for vegetation, artists will be able to design and create worlds that would otherwise be beyond reach.įinally, Weta brings other tools including Loki for physics-based simulations, Barbershop for hair and fur, and Koru for advanced puppet rigging. Tools such as Scenic Design and Citybuilder will drastically speed up the creation of procedural worlds. Next up are some of the tools that drive the creation of worlds and everything in them. It will be interesting to see whether these are directly integrated into Unity considering it already has its own rendering tools, but I’d expect Gazebo to really stretch what is possible in Unity, especially as it relates to pre-visualisation and virtual production. Manuka is the path-tracing renderer and Gazebo is an interactive renderer. Weta's physics-based simulations, hair and fur rendering and advanced rigging are all now in Unity (Image credit: Unity Technologies)įirst up, there’s the two core renderers, Manuka and Gazebo. Let’s take a whistle-stop tour of some of these tools. The potential of what can be created through these tools is going to be scary once Unity has managed to make them all accessible. Each tool, on its own, is capable of delivering amazing results, but their full power lies in their ability to be utilised together. Weta’s toolset has been industry-honed over the last 15 years and Unity now owns it all. Unity is a now serious competitor to specialist VFX software like Houdini and Cinema 4D. The coming together of these two heavyweights will result in bringing a plethora of tried and tested VFX tools to artists that will drastically speed up workflows, and enable artists all around the world to create incredible content. Why develop all the tools you want from scratch, when they already exist in the world? This acquisition brought together world leaders in both real-time development and innovators in digital entertainment. It seems that Unity was wanting to fast-track its tool development. What on earth could one of the biggest realtime game engines want with this VFX company? Most people’s experience of this New Zealand-based VFX company was through watching any number of game-changing cinematic masterpieces including Avatar, Wonder Woman, The Lord of the Rings, and King Kong, among others. It was difficult for many to grasp what this acquisition really meant. It was in November 2021 that the news became public: Unity had acquired Weta Digital. Build scenes for animation and VFX with ease using Unity's new powerful tools and features (Image credit: Unity Technologies)
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