Wow. Weta works on some really big films, so it will be exciting to see the work that they have done become available in the asset store.
In the PR they say:
> [...] the asset library we’ll inherit [...], which includes urban and natural environments, flora and fauna, humans, man-made objects, materials, textures, and more. The WetaFX team will continue their [...] work for major film and TV productions and feed into this asset library for years to come.
Peter Jackson (of LoTR fame) is one of the founders of Weta.
Sad to see another one of New Zealand's large, well known employers get sold.
I'm curious what the actual employee staff numbers are given the various Weta companies are AFAIK pretty notorious for using "temporary contractors" rather than actually employing people.
It's also an interesting development given that they only recently started promoting a cloud-based service for integrating their technology with Maya & Houdini.
IME is almost all highly skilled/(relatively) highly paid work in NZ is done by contractors. It's almost a right of passage for devs here.
For US HNers - it's different than in the US where health insurance is tied to employment. I typically have the exact same health coverage whether I'm employed, self-employed, or un-employed.
the entire film industry is "temporary contractors" visual effects most guilty of that among the various departments. (I work in a section of the industry)
I've worked with some of weta's toolset on the avatar sequels and I've also worked with unreal on various projects... it's interesting hearing this and I wonder if that's part of the toolset that will be released
Given that the last National government passed the "Hobbit Law" to allow film industry companies to treat people who would, in any other industry, be employees, as contractors, as well as banning collective bargaining for them - the actual employee numbers will be verrrry low.
> Sad to see another one of New Zealand's large, well known employers get sold.
We'll see. There's the risk of massive job losses in Wellington, which wouldn't spark joy, but they're an absolutely terrible employer in terms of workplace health and safety and sexual harrassment, so it's just as possible there is an improvement in employment conditions.
Workplace health and safety in a dev shop, can you elaborate on that? All I can think of is temperamental printers, crappy chairs and expired snacks in the honor box.
Selling may be a win for the business owner, but since the parent commenter refers to the business as an "employer", they might be looking at it from a different point of view. Like that of the employees.
Unity is trying real hard to convince investors that it can compete with Unreal in the movie production space, while their actual capabilities are embarrassingly limited. Especially if you want to get shit done out-of-the-box, but also in terms of the max no-matter-the-budget end result quality. Hopefully they can catch up in the long run. The space needs competition.
Unity doesn't have to be an Unreal competitor -plenty of Unity folks in the Indie market (but I guess that's not where the money is) but I suppose you are right-for me, its easier to work with Unity than Unreal as a developer and I hope Unity can catch up technology wise.. not sure how acquiring WETA helps them in that.. its a cool Visual FX studio not a technology company..
I think you missed a key point in the GP's comment. This HAS to be about competing in use for movies, not game development. Unreal has made huge strides in being used for green screen backgrounds rendered in real time and I don't know what else.
This feels like a huge whiff to me, Unity needs to focus on games and just make money there. Games is a bigger market than movies at this point and there is plenty of room to grow there, especially if they can continue to make it easier for individuals/small groups to make a game in their spare time.
> its a cool Visual FX studio not a technology company..
Weta develops metric tones of tech internally, including employing some of the top graphics researchers at various points in their careers. There is tons of tech talent in VFX and animation shops. Hell, I work with libraries open sourced by Pixar as part of my day job at a FAANG.
The announcement mentions that the "FX studio" part is getting spun out into "Weta FX" which isn't part of the acquisition, so the part Unity is acquiring is the "technology company" part of "Weta Digital".
Also used in the UK to create virtual TV studios, notably for sports programmes where the pundits sit in a green-screen studio and impressive real-time backdrops are created around them. This allows a single physical studio to support multiple programmes using a range of different virtual assets. See [0] for a range of the different things Unreal is used for apart from games.
Taking Procedural Movie-quality 3D asset tools and putting them in the hands of small studios to lift their games closer to AAA production values sounds like a smart play by Unity.
It's similar to unreal acquiring Quixel Megascans [1] so developers can just import high quality 3D meshes into their levels. Or Ninite [2] allowing artists to work without worrying about system polygon limits.
Seems like both tools (Unity, Unreal) are growing even further beyond mere rendering or in-game engines into full game construction tool-sets which empower developers during the entire game's production.
As 3D hardware grows in power, what was a "movie quality" asset and too complex for realtime rendering becomes a "standard AAA quality realtime asset." Especially as all engines bring forward a technology like Ninite.
> Taking Procedural Movie-quality 3D asset tools and putting them in the hands of small studios to lift their games closer to AAA production values sounds like a smart play by Unity.
Is it, actually? I mean it sounds nice but isn't Weta's entire pipeline optimized for offline rendering, yeah? Pre-rendered movies? I've seen a lot of game developers bite themselves in the butt trying to apply that kind of tech (and assets) to games which instead need to be optimized for realtime rendering.
> Weta Digital’s 275+ engineers will join Unity. The VFX artists will be spun out into a new entity, “Weta FX”, which Peter Jackson will continue to own the majority of. The two companies expect to continue working together, with Unity noting that it sees Weta FX being one of their “largest customers in the Media and Entertainment space” moving forward.
So, Weta FX will continue doing effects for movies, and the engineers from Weta will work for Unity, likely continuing to develop the tools they've already got, as well as contributing to Unity proper.
There is some kind of continuing relationship between the two: Weta FX will keep contributing assets to Weta Digital's (i.e. Unity's) asset library. Maybe that's in exchange for being able to continue to use the software? I haven't seen the deal spelled out anywhere.
From the Unity blog post [1]: "Another exciting element of this acquisition is the asset library we’ll inherit from Weta Digital, which includes urban and natural environments, flora and fauna, humans, man-made objects, materials, textures, and more. The WetaFX team will continue their industry-leading VFX work for major film and TV productions and feed into this asset library for years to come."
How good? My typical expectation of in house tools is they're extremely powerful but full of interlocking dependencies and hard for outsiders to use without considerable training. Is Weta significantly above the waterline here?
Is Unity anywhere close to earning as much as you'd naively expect from a company engaging in billion dollar takeovers or is that simply another venture capital bonfire?
I feel very much incapable to guess with even the tiniest glimpse of "educated" in it, and that's despite usually being far in the "more confident than I should be" corner when it comes to stuff like this. Both seem rather unlikely to me, but it has to be one of them, if not both.
Not sure that this really answers the question, but they're valued at around 13.6 billion with revenue for 2020 being around 752 million dollars, with an operating loss of 66ish million. Non-GAAP operating profit margin is expected to be a loss of $35 million to $45 million.
> naively expect from a company engaging in billion dollar takeovers
Unity's current market cap is $48B. Doing a levered buyout of another company that is ~1/30th of your size is stupidly trivial to do with cheap credit and an asset value that size.
For the uniformed - this is essentially how firms like Goldman Sachs make billions of dollars. Massively simplifying this, but they loan a portion of the $1.6B (let's say 50%) just like you would do on a house. The collateral is the stock of Unity in case they default on the payments.
I wish they'd focus on fixing the things they've left broken and scattered throughout their engine rather than buying up companies in a space already absolutely dominated by their direct competitor.
Yep, as a long time unity user I really think Unity is just spaghetti all the way down to it's core. The number of strange memory leaks and graphics bugs you find once you really get into the engine is appalling.
Frankly, it's probably the worst software I've ever had to develop on, and was a huge reason I ended up leaving VR/AR development and just went back into regular software engineering.
This is a tangent, but I have been thinking a lot about why Unity is valued so highly and maybe it makes sense. I wasn't quite old enough to even stand at this point, but based on what I've read, Unity does actually seem similar to .NET + Microsoft early monopoly on certain software stacks. That is, it was horrible to use, but did address a niche.
I'm literally reading this comment at 10pm because I'm sitting here doing a bunch of VR builds isolating why lighting is fine in the editor and broken when built.
Historically visual effects companies have been some of the worst investments possible. They traditionally haven't had much in the way of revenue generation outside of the five major production companies that they rely on to give them work. Fifteen years ago spending even 10s of millions to buy one would have been considered extremely risky.
Weta is much more than "just" a VFX company. That part is still going to stay with Peter Jackson.
What is being bought here is the technology. Similar to any big VFX company, there is a lot of proprietary technology (renderers, modelers, engines, pipelines etc) that Unity is purchasing here. VFX tech is worth millions. Ask Autodesk or Adobe.
I never said "just" - other companies have had proprietary software, though most of it has been more about customization and scaling then the refinement that sells most commercial graphics software.
Some software like Nuke had good internals and had a lot of development put into a polished interface, which then payed off in a big way. I'm not skeptical that weta has some good internal technology, I'm skeptical that it is worth 1.6 billion dollars, especially to Unity.
>Meanwhile, Unity will be taking over the development of Weta Digital’s many built-in-house tools — things like City Builder
I'm so excited about this, while an array of 3rd party tools exist, I'd love something straight from Unity. The existing city builders are basically hobby projects by a single dev.
That said, you can do some amazing things with them. As is Unity is much more accessible than Unreal, I'm beyond happy to see this
Sorry to sound negative, but what makes you believe you're going to get access to those tools? Do you believe they're just going to plug them into Unity and off you go?
My take is they're not going to see the light of day within the consumer market.
Readit News
In the PR they say: > [...] the asset library we’ll inherit [...], which includes urban and natural environments, flora and fauna, humans, man-made objects, materials, textures, and more. The WetaFX team will continue their [...] work for major film and TV productions and feed into this asset library for years to come.
Peter Jackson (of LoTR fame) is one of the founders of Weta.
Sad to see another one of New Zealand's large, well known employers get sold.
It's also an interesting development given that they only recently started promoting a cloud-based service for integrating their technology with Maya & Houdini.
For US HNers - it's different than in the US where health insurance is tied to employment. I typically have the exact same health coverage whether I'm employed, self-employed, or un-employed.
I've worked with some of weta's toolset on the avatar sequels and I've also worked with unreal on various projects... it's interesting hearing this and I wonder if that's part of the toolset that will be released
Film projects have weird schedules. You simply couldn't run a business if you had to have a consistent set of people over time.
We'll see. There's the risk of massive job losses in Wellington, which wouldn't spark joy, but they're an absolutely terrible employer in terms of workplace health and safety and sexual harrassment, so it's just as possible there is an improvement in employment conditions.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/300191900/fractured-culture-a...
https://www.1news.co.nz/2020/07/28/toxic-culture-at-acclaime...
https://www.1news.co.nz/2020/12/19/woman-whose-sexual-harass...
Isn’t selling a success? That’s the whole idea!
This feels like a huge whiff to me, Unity needs to focus on games and just make money there. Games is a bigger market than movies at this point and there is plenty of room to grow there, especially if they can continue to make it easier for individuals/small groups to make a game in their spare time.
Weta develops metric tones of tech internally, including employing some of the top graphics researchers at various points in their careers. There is tons of tech talent in VFX and animation shops. Hell, I work with libraries open sourced by Pixar as part of my day job at a FAANG.
[0] https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/build-for-architec...
It's similar to unreal acquiring Quixel Megascans [1] so developers can just import high quality 3D meshes into their levels. Or Ninite [2] allowing artists to work without worrying about system polygon limits.
Seems like both tools (Unity, Unreal) are growing even further beyond mere rendering or in-game engines into full game construction tool-sets which empower developers during the entire game's production.
As 3D hardware grows in power, what was a "movie quality" asset and too complex for realtime rendering becomes a "standard AAA quality realtime asset." Especially as all engines bring forward a technology like Ninite.
[1] https://respawnfirst.com/unreal-engine-5-assets-powered-paki...
[2] https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/RenderingFeatures/Na...
Is it, actually? I mean it sounds nice but isn't Weta's entire pipeline optimized for offline rendering, yeah? Pre-rendered movies? I've seen a lot of game developers bite themselves in the butt trying to apply that kind of tech (and assets) to games which instead need to be optimized for realtime rendering.
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It's not a smart idea due to other factors as well, like storage usage.
So, Weta FX will continue doing effects for movies, and the engineers from Weta will work for Unity, likely continuing to develop the tools they've already got, as well as contributing to Unity proper.
From the Unity blog post [1]: "Another exciting element of this acquisition is the asset library we’ll inherit from Weta Digital, which includes urban and natural environments, flora and fauna, humans, man-made objects, materials, textures, and more. The WetaFX team will continue their industry-leading VFX work for major film and TV productions and feed into this asset library for years to come."
[1] https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-weta-digital
1. Weta (for the Urukai this would be the wetsuit-esque muscles outfit, armour and helmet/mask - before the combined them)
2. Wardrobe (The rags laid over the armour)
3. Makeup (not really needed for the Urukhai except I seem to remember they used to darken around our eyes)
The order would be slightly changed for the elf costume with makeup playing a larger part (this also involved the wigs).
It's hard to imagine what part the teams involved with this would be doing for Unity!
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I feel very much incapable to guess with even the tiniest glimpse of "educated" in it, and that's despite usually being far in the "more confident than I should be" corner when it comes to stuff like this. Both seem rather unlikely to me, but it has to be one of them, if not both.
https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/12/unitys-first-post-ipo-rep...
Unity's current market cap is $48B. Doing a levered buyout of another company that is ~1/30th of your size is stupidly trivial to do with cheap credit and an asset value that size.
For the uniformed - this is essentially how firms like Goldman Sachs make billions of dollars. Massively simplifying this, but they loan a portion of the $1.6B (let's say 50%) just like you would do on a house. The collateral is the stock of Unity in case they default on the payments.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-08-11-unity-reve...
> the company noted that it's the 11th consecutive quarter during which revenue growth reached 30% or more.
This is a tangent, but I have been thinking a lot about why Unity is valued so highly and maybe it makes sense. I wasn't quite old enough to even stand at this point, but based on what I've read, Unity does actually seem similar to .NET + Microsoft early monopoly on certain software stacks. That is, it was horrible to use, but did address a niche.
Deleted Comment
What is being bought here is the technology. Similar to any big VFX company, there is a lot of proprietary technology (renderers, modelers, engines, pipelines etc) that Unity is purchasing here. VFX tech is worth millions. Ask Autodesk or Adobe.
Some software like Nuke had good internals and had a lot of development put into a polished interface, which then payed off in a big way. I'm not skeptical that weta has some good internal technology, I'm skeptical that it is worth 1.6 billion dollars, especially to Unity.
I'm so excited about this, while an array of 3rd party tools exist, I'd love something straight from Unity. The existing city builders are basically hobby projects by a single dev.
That said, you can do some amazing things with them. As is Unity is much more accessible than Unreal, I'm beyond happy to see this
My take is they're not going to see the light of day within the consumer market.
>Unity made a video about the acquisition titled "Bringing Weta Digital’s tools to all creators"
https://youtu.be/hRCFTWA6j-c
https://youtu.be/hRCFTWA6j-c