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They also acquired 250 people who they are now laying off and Weta is rehiring. Seems like a disaster of a deal by Unity. Weta just got free money for a snapsh

by kakali 3y ago

They also acquired 250 people who they are now laying off and Weta is rehiring. Seems like a disaster of a deal by Unity. Weta just got free money for a snapshot of their code.

Jare 3y ago
Unity apparently had no clue what to do with the toolset when they had the team that built it, you can imagine what they will do with it now without the team. Weta sure isn't re-buying it because they already have it. It's been literally a 1.6B gift to Peter Jackson?
- qwytw 3y ago
  I understood that they are still keeping the actual Weta "tools" part with it's employees? These 265 are just the people worked in the "professional services" part of the business and were doing actual VFX stuff for Wētā FX and not on the tooling part. Edit: I was wrong, 275 was the entire workforce of Weta Digital when Unity acquired it back in 2021. So yeah.. it seems they just almost literally burnt $1.6 billion..
- drtgh 3y ago
  I'm not familiarized with those game engines, but the first search showed me that "Unity is more commonly used to develop mobile or 2D games while Unreal is used to create video games on consoles or next-generation PCs." I have no idea, my own speculation as curiosity, but maybe Unity was looking for coding for realistic rendering, know-how, for rise a competence with the Unreal market space? But if it were the case, why let to fly away the team? Maybe was this part of the deal with Weta? to sell an snapshot as the parent comment says, with the pack of programmers for to train Unity's team temporally? I don't know. The numbers are very high, if I were in charge I wouldn't invest that quantity of money without sending firstly a pair of emissaries for to read code and verify the toolset will be useful for the pipeline. PS: The shareholders owe me a few beers for sowing the seeds of doubt.
  - maeln 3y ago
    > but maybe Unity was looking for coding for realistic rendering, know-how, for rise a competence with the Unreal market space? Unity already has a 3d engine that can match Unreal (more or less, and we won't talk about the fact that there is 3 rendering pipeline, and the deprecated one is the only one who is reliable. Really, we won't talk about it). If anything, Unity use to have some of the best realtime-cg engineer under their payroll. The mobile/2D game is mostly historical, a lot of AAA quality game have been made in Unity. VFX is a different beast. For the longest time, realtime CG and VFX/movie CG use to be really two separate field (with a lot of connection ofc, CG is CG). Unreal made wave when they started to be used in cinema (The Mandalorian I think was the first big name openly saying they were using Unreal in their pipeline). Realtime CG got so good that it can (for some specific effect) be used instead of traditional VFX pipeline, which are usually slower to iterate in. I think the exec at Unity saw Unreal "success" and wanted to get a piece of the cake before it was too late. It was not a bad idea, but Unity as been so mismanaged these past few years, it again completely failed at producing anything real, stable and usable.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      A major difference that is no longer a difference is that VFX used to be about creating visual imagery in the context of a forced perspective with live action shots mixed in. The dynamic background technology being used now for shows like The Mandalorian and Star Trek changed the story. Now VFX teams are being asked to craft the back half of a set as a 3D model that can be blended with live action shot in front of a screen displaying that model to proper perspective based on camera position. So now they have to care about the 3D dynamics of the scene in a way they previously weren't required to... A way that video game engines have been wrestling to ground for decades.
      - georgeecollins 3y ago
        This. Virtual production is an incredible savings on the cost of film production. It still has problems and expenses, but there was a huge push toward it during COVID. Film production is a big market world wide. I would also guess that if you have really good technology for virtual production you have tech that is useful for other things, like tele-presence, simulation, image scanning and so forth.
- coughupalung 3y ago
  I worked for Weta a few years before the acquisition, let me just say that I'm not surprised that Unity didn't know what to do with it. It was never a single DCC set of code, but lots of separate tools (many very old) that only sort-of worked together. I imagine they would have to throw everything out and start over to build something on the level of Maya or Houdini.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    I worked in the industry and fairly closely with a number of notable Weta Engineers. I still don't know why you'd spend 1.6billion on a VFX pipeline. I mean sure it gives you cachet, but a lot of the pipeline is mostly asset management rather than the few bits of special sauce that provide artist tooling. but 1.6 billion is a ridiculous amount of money for a company's turnover of ~110million[1], with pretty thin profit margins, compared to a software company. Maybe I'm wrong about weta, they did make mari after all, which is pretty special, however the foundry didn't pay anywhere near that much for mari, for what appears to be a similar licensing deal. [1]https://rocketreach.co/weta-digital-profile_b5c60ffef42e0c50 https://rocketreach.co/weta-digital-profile_b5c60ffef42e0c50
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    It's always fascinating to me to watch companies do an acquisition of a technical stack that has no pedigree aligned with their own technical stack. Software has shape, and if you're acquiring a stack that's wildly different from your own, there's no guarantee that integration will be particularly feasible. You may not even be acquiring the talent that would know where to start with such an integration because you never know what key pieces of the system were built ages ago by somebody who left long before acquisition was even discussed. I've watched this happen with systems as closely aligned as two Python / JavaScript tech stacks that differed in frameworks, libraries, and wire protocol. It took something like 2 and 1/2 years past executive projections to integrate the offerings.
    - alex_suzuki 3y ago
      „Software has shape“ - apt!
picadores 3y ago
Mindless Billions Anywhere at work..
mkl 3y ago
Unity also got a ton of 3D models and assets, and the well-known Wētā Digital name, but yes it is strange to do this.
- NickNameNick 3y ago
  Looks like the digital trademark will be going back to FX, so unity isn't even keeping that.

by kakali 3y ago

They also acquired 250 people who they are now laying off and Weta is rehiring. Seems like a disaster of a deal by Unity. Weta just got free money for a snapshot of their code.

Jare 3y ago

Unity apparently had no clue what to do with the toolset when they had the team that built it, you can imagine what they will do with it now without the team. Weta sure isn't re-buying it because they already have it. It's been literally a 1.6B gift to Peter Jackson?

qwytw 3y ago
I understood that they are still keeping the actual Weta "tools" part with it's employees? These 265 are just the people worked in the "professional services" part of the business and were doing actual VFX stuff for Wētā FX and not on the tooling part. Edit: I was wrong, 275 was the entire workforce of Weta Digital when Unity acquired it back in 2021. So yeah.. it seems they just almost literally burnt $1.6 billion..
drtgh 3y ago
I'm not familiarized with those game engines, but the first search showed me that "Unity is more commonly used to develop mobile or 2D games while Unreal is used to create video games on consoles or next-generation PCs." I have no idea, my own speculation as curiosity, but maybe Unity was looking for coding for realistic rendering, know-how, for rise a competence with the Unreal market space? But if it were the case, why let to fly away the team? Maybe was this part of the deal with Weta? to sell an snapshot as the parent comment says, with the pack of programmers for to train Unity's team temporally? I don't know. The numbers are very high, if I were in charge I wouldn't invest that quantity of money without sending firstly a pair of emissaries for to read code and verify the toolset will be useful for the pipeline. PS: The shareholders owe me a few beers for sowing the seeds of doubt.
- maeln 3y ago
  > but maybe Unity was looking for coding for realistic rendering, know-how, for rise a competence with the Unreal market space? Unity already has a 3d engine that can match Unreal (more or less, and we won't talk about the fact that there is 3 rendering pipeline, and the deprecated one is the only one who is reliable. Really, we won't talk about it). If anything, Unity use to have some of the best realtime-cg engineer under their payroll. The mobile/2D game is mostly historical, a lot of AAA quality game have been made in Unity. VFX is a different beast. For the longest time, realtime CG and VFX/movie CG use to be really two separate field (with a lot of connection ofc, CG is CG). Unreal made wave when they started to be used in cinema (The Mandalorian I think was the first big name openly saying they were using Unreal in their pipeline). Realtime CG got so good that it can (for some specific effect) be used instead of traditional VFX pipeline, which are usually slower to iterate in. I think the exec at Unity saw Unreal "success" and wanted to get a piece of the cake before it was too late. It was not a bad idea, but Unity as been so mismanaged these past few years, it again completely failed at producing anything real, stable and usable.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    A major difference that is no longer a difference is that VFX used to be about creating visual imagery in the context of a forced perspective with live action shots mixed in. The dynamic background technology being used now for shows like The Mandalorian and Star Trek changed the story. Now VFX teams are being asked to craft the back half of a set as a 3D model that can be blended with live action shot in front of a screen displaying that model to proper perspective based on camera position. So now they have to care about the 3D dynamics of the scene in a way they previously weren't required to... A way that video game engines have been wrestling to ground for decades.
    - georgeecollins 3y ago
      This. Virtual production is an incredible savings on the cost of film production. It still has problems and expenses, but there was a huge push toward it during COVID. Film production is a big market world wide. I would also guess that if you have really good technology for virtual production you have tech that is useful for other things, like tele-presence, simulation, image scanning and so forth.
coughupalung 3y ago
I worked for Weta a few years before the acquisition, let me just say that I'm not surprised that Unity didn't know what to do with it. It was never a single DCC set of code, but lots of separate tools (many very old) that only sort-of worked together. I imagine they would have to throw everything out and start over to build something on the level of Maya or Houdini.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  I worked in the industry and fairly closely with a number of notable Weta Engineers. I still don't know why you'd spend 1.6billion on a VFX pipeline. I mean sure it gives you cachet, but a lot of the pipeline is mostly asset management rather than the few bits of special sauce that provide artist tooling. but 1.6 billion is a ridiculous amount of money for a company's turnover of ~110million[1], with pretty thin profit margins, compared to a software company. Maybe I'm wrong about weta, they did make mari after all, which is pretty special, however the foundry didn't pay anywhere near that much for mari, for what appears to be a similar licensing deal. [1]https://rocketreach.co/weta-digital-profile_b5c60ffef42e0c50 https://rocketreach.co/weta-digital-profile_b5c60ffef42e0c50
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  It's always fascinating to me to watch companies do an acquisition of a technical stack that has no pedigree aligned with their own technical stack. Software has shape, and if you're acquiring a stack that's wildly different from your own, there's no guarantee that integration will be particularly feasible. You may not even be acquiring the talent that would know where to start with such an integration because you never know what key pieces of the system were built ages ago by somebody who left long before acquisition was even discussed. I've watched this happen with systems as closely aligned as two Python / JavaScript tech stacks that differed in frameworks, libraries, and wire protocol. It took something like 2 and 1/2 years past executive projections to integrate the offerings.
  - alex_suzuki 3y ago
    „Software has shape“ - apt!

picadores 3y ago

Mindless Billions Anywhere at work..

mkl 3y ago

Unity also got a ton of 3D models and assets, and the well-known Wētā Digital name, but yes it is strange to do this.

NickNameNick 3y ago
Looks like the digital trademark will be going back to FX, so unity isn't even keeping that.