The global interactive real-time 3D (RT3D) content creation and operation platform Unity announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with Weta Digital for the acquisition of tools, pipelines, technology, and engineering design talents. According to the terms of the agreement, Unity will invest US$1.625 billion in the acquisition of Weta Digital in the form of a combination of cash and stock.
CEO of WetaFX. Weta Chief Technology Officer Joe Marks will join Unity and serve as Weta Digital’s Chief Technology Officer. The proposed acquisition is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of Unity’s financial year 2021 and is subject to customary delivery conditions. During the acquisition process, Raine Group acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Weta Digital.
The ultimate goal of this acquisition is to bring Weta’s many advanced and exclusive visual effects (VFX) tools to the hands of millions of creators and artists around the world. After being integrated into the Unity platform, these tools will provide great help for realizing a new generation of real-time 3D creative content and shaping the future of the meta-universe.
Weta Digital will join the Unity Creative Solutions Department and continue to improve Weta Digital’s dozens of patented graphics and VFX tools, including Manuka, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Barbershop, HighDef and CityBuilder, and many other tools. These world-class artist tools will be provided to creators in the future through an easy-to-use cloud-based workflow, and Unity’s deep expertise in the real-time field will help them realize wonderful ideas.
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The Weta Digital VFX team, which has won many Oscar awards, will continue to operate as an independent entity, WetaFX, and is expected to become Unity’s largest customer in the media and entertainment field. WetaFX is still majority-owned by Sir Peter Jackson and led by CEO Prem Akkaraju.
Through this transaction, Unity will receive:
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Weta’s world-class engineering design talents. This excellent team of 275 engineers is well-known in the industry for designing, constructing, and maintaining Weta Digital tools and core pipelines;
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Dozens of industry-leading tools, such as Manuka, Gazebo, Barbershop, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Koru, etc., will all be seamlessly integrated into Weta’s industry benchmark production pipeline;
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A basic data platform that supports interoperable 3D art creation, facilitating seamless collaboration among tens of thousands of artists;
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A resource library containing thousands of high-quality resources. In the future, as the WetaFX team continues to create the world’s top VFX, it will continue to enrich and grow.
Sir Peter Jackson, co-founder, and chairman of Weta Digital said, “Weta Digital’s tools have created infinite possibilities for us, allowing us to present the wonderful world and creatures that originally existed in the imagination to the world’s eyes. Unity and Weta Digital have joined forces for this Artists in all industries have paved the way for them to use these amazing and powerful creative tools to complete their creations. Providing Weta Digital technology to aspiring creative workers is definitely a disruptive change, and Unity is exactly what The ideal company to turn this vision into reality.”
John Riccitiello, President, and CEO of Unity said, “To provide ordinary creators with these industry-leading tools, and to bring Sir Peter Jackson’s genius creativity and Weta’s amazing engineering design talent to artists around the world, we feel very excited. From “Avatar”, “Lord of the Rings” to “Wonder Woman”, Weta Digital’s tools and techniques have helped create the most beautiful characters and scenes in the world’s most exciting movies. After integrating the powerful advantages of Unity, these Tools and technologies will help a new generation of creators build, transform and distribute stunning real-time 3D (RT3D) content.”
Weta Digital has successfully helped create a number of award-winning movies and TV series, including “Avatar”, “Black Widow”, “Game of Thrones”, “Lord of the Rings”, “Rise of the Apes”, “Suicide Squad”, etc., Among them, the top creative team composed of VFX artists and engineers is indispensable. This creative team helped build an extremely complex art pipeline, developed a toolset for performing advanced facial capture and control, anatomical modeling, advanced simulation and deformation modeling of moving objects, and procedural hair modeling. Hundreds of attributes obtained in thousands of shots have created, developed, and perfected many other technologies.
According to reports, Unity and Weta Digital will provide more and more game developers, artists, and potentially millions of creators with advanced content creation tools and cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) subscription model. By moving these high-fidelity tools and resources to the cloud, Unity and Weta Digital will provide creators with new opportunities to use their familiar and favorite creative interface while using extremely powerful art tools and procedural building blocks. And expandable content. Creators will have the ability to improve the process and simplify the production, achieve perfect and stable predictable results, and finally successfully build their own world in the meta-universe.
