Unity Buys Ziva in Photoreal 3D Race; Game Makers Balk at Metaverse

Game engine maker Unity is acquiring Ziva Dynamics, a company that uses machine learning to make more lifelike and efficient models of human characters. Its tech opens the door to creating hyper-detailed characters (and not just photorealistic ones) for games and AR/VR apps while also more easily letting those characters interact with users in believable ways.

This acquisition slots into the conversation spurred by other recent developments like Epic’s introduction of MetaHuman Creator, a Unreal engine tool for making detailed humans, and the strides Meta Platforms’ Reality Labs has made toward photorealistic avatars.