Acquisition aims to put award-winning VFX tools and technology into the hands of millions of creators and artists
San Francisco, November 9, 2021 – Unity (NYSE: U), the world’s leading interactive real-time 3D (RT3D) content creation and operations platform, today announced that it has signed with Weta Digital for the acquisition of tools, pipelines, technology and engineering design talent a definitive agreement. The ultimate goal of this acquisition is to put Weta’s many advanced and exclusive visual effects (VFX) tools into the hands of millions of creators and artists around the world. When integrated into the Unity platform, these tools will go a long way toward enabling a new generation of real-time 3D creative content and shaping the future of the Metaverse.
Weta Digital will join Unity’s Authoring Solutions division and continue to refine Weta Digital’s dozens of proprietary graphics and VFX tools, including Manuka, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Barbershop, HighDef, and CityBuilder, among many others. These world-class artist tools will be made available to creators in the future through an easy-to-use cloud-based workflow, enabling them to realize great ideas along with Unity’s deep real-time expertise.
The Oscar-winning Weta Digital VFX team will continue to operate as an independent entity, WetaFX, and is expected to be Unity’s largest client in media and entertainment. WetaFX remains majority-owned by Sir Peter Jackson and led by CEO Prem Akkaraju.
“Weta Digital’s tools have created endless possibilities for us to bring to the world the wonderful worlds and creatures that originally existed in our imagination.” Co-Founder of Weta Digital? Chairman and Chairman Sir Peter Jackson said. “Unity and Weta Digital have joined forces to pave the way for artists of all industries to create with these amazingly powerful creative tools. Offering Weta Digital’s technology to aspiring creatives is absolutely game-changing change, and Unity is the ideal business to bring that vision to life.”
“We’re excited to bring these industry-leading tools to everyday creators and bring the creative genius of Sir Peter Jackson and the incredible engineering talent of Weta to artists around the world.” President and CEO, Unity John Riccitiello said. “From Avatar, Lord of the Rings to Wonder Woman, Weta Digital’s tools and technologies have helped create the stunning characters and scenes in the world’s greatest films, and when combined with the power of Unity, these tools and Technology will help a new generation of creators build, transform and distribute stunning real-time 3D (RT3D) content.”
Weta Digital is a premier creator and innovator in the field of visual effects and animation. It has been striving to achieve the most realistic and beautiful artistic visual effects and create high-quality surreal characters, objects and worlds, and has successfully helped create a number of award-winning artists. Movies and TV shows, including Avatar, Black Widow, Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Suicide Squad, and more. Weta Digital is able to perform at such a high level, thanks to a top-notch creative team of VFX artists and engineers. This creative team has helped build extremely complex art pipelines, developed toolsets for advanced facial capture and control, anatomical modeling, advanced simulation and morphing of moving objects, procedural hair Hundreds of properties acquired over thousands of takes have pioneered, developed and perfected numerous other techniques.
“Unity is unique in providing top-of-the-line tools and technology for creatives, and Weta Digital’s acclaimed high-end art pipeline and tools are among the best in the industry. This acquisition gives us the opportunity to bring these resources to the This is an unprecedented achievement for a wider group of artists,” said Weta Digital CEO Prem Akkaraju. “Weta’s goal has always been to inspire and inspire a new generation of creatives, and I’m excited to continue that mission with Unity. I’m sure there will be more and more content in the future that rivals Avatar and Game of Thrones,” And Unity is the right company to lead us to make our dreams come true.”
Through this deal, Unity will receive:
Weta’s world-class engineering talent, an exceptional team of 275 engineers renowned in the industry for designing, building and maintaining Weta Digital tools and core pipelines;
Dozens of industry-leading tools, including Manuka, Gazebo, Barbershop, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Koru, will all be seamlessly integrated into Weta’s industry-standard production pipeline;
●A basic data platform that supports interoperable 3D art creation, facilitating seamless collaboration among tens of thousands of artists;
●The resource library includes 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.
“Weta Digital’s dozens of tools are all built on the same, unified pipeline, which perfectly reflects its sophistication. Taken individually, each tool is very powerful on its own, and as a complete platform, they will greatly enhance our capabilities, making it easier for artists to realize their ideas and collaborate like never before,” said Marc Whitten, SVP and GM of Creative Solutions at Unity. “We are very excited to work closely with WetaFX to continuously push the limits of art with these tools. In addition, as we refine our pipeline for content creators, we will also open these tools to VFX, entertainment, as well as games and other Artists in the industry.”
Unity and Weta Digital will provide a growing number of game developers, artists and potentially millions of creators with very advanced content creation tools and a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription model. By moving these high-fidelity tools and assets to the cloud, Unity and Weta Digital will give creators new opportunities to leverage incredibly powerful art tools, procedural building blocks while using the authoring interface they know and love and scalable content. Creators will have the ability to refine the process and streamline production, achieve predictable results that tend to be perfect and stable, and ultimately successfully build their own universe in the Metaverse.
Under the terms of the agreement, Unity will acquire Weta Digital for $1.625 billion in a combination of cash and stock. Prem Akkaraju, who took over as CEO of Weta Digital in early 2020 and built Weta’s cloud-based business services, will continue to serve as CEO of WetaFX. Weta CTO Joe Marks will join Unity as CTO of Weta Digital. The proposed acquisition is expected to close in Unity’s fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 and is subject to customary closing conditions.
During the acquisition, Raine Group acted as exclusive financial advisor to Weta Digital.
About Unity
Unity (NYSE: U) is the world’s leading interactive real-time 3D content creation and operation platform. All creators, including game development, art, architecture, automotive design, film and television animation, can turn their ideas into reality with Unity. The Unity platform provides a complete set of software solutions for creating, operating and monetizing any real-time interactive 2D and 3D content, supporting platforms including mobile phones, tablets, PCs, game consoles, augmented reality and virtual reality devices. The company’s R&D team of more than 1,800 people keeps Unity’s technology at the forefront of the world, while closely following the iteration of partners to ensure optimized support services on the latest versions and platforms. In 2020, games and experiences based on Unity will be downloaded more than 5 billion times a month on a global scale. For more information, please visit www.unity.cn.
About Weta Digital
Weta Digital is a leader in creativity and innovation in the visual effects and animation fields, attracting countless talents, partners and clients who are committed to achieving the most realistic and beautiful artistic visual effects. Weta’s patented pipeline is constantly improving and provides artists with many of the tools they need to create their best work. Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Weta Digital is the world’s largest single-site VFX studio, bringing together artists from over 40 countries. They are the world’s most creative and ambitious entertainment industry artists, engineers and managers, and their work has won 6 Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects, 13 Academy Awards for Best Technology and 6 BAFTA Awards for Visual Effects and 34 Visual Effects Society Awards presented by industry peers. From Gollum in The Lord of the Rings to Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, from Middle-earth to Pandora, many of Weta Digital’s groundbreaking animated characters and Chimei whimsical worlds for performance are seen on the screen The best visuals ever.
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