Unity Acquiring Weta Digital: A Breakdown
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
- In November 2021, American software maker Unity Software announced that it would buy New Zealand-based Weta Digital for $1.65 billion.
Weta Digital is one of New Zealand's most well-known technology companies. It provides visual effects services for movie productions. It also produces the computer tools for making those visual effects services.
New Zealand is a pretty isolated economy that mostly exports milk and sheep. So the development of a leader in the high-tech visual effects industry is really interesting. In this video, we will look at Weta Digital and what its new owner might want to do with it.
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"Peter Jackson ... is most well known for his work on [proceeds to mention three things I've literally never heard of, and not Lord of the Rings]"
me: is, uh, is there a different peter jackson in the business or did Asianometry put a joke into a video finally?
I make jokes all the time! I am a funny guy. I even made a mom joke in a video once!
@@Asianometry I'm a relatively new sub to the channel (probably only been here a month or so) and I hadn't picked up on any jokes yet! Glad to see you've got some humor :)
@@Asianometry i kek’d. heavenly creatures is old school
@@Asianometry i dunno if you’ve watched Patrick Boyle here on RUclips but the dry sarcasm you guys have is the best (not so if you’re eating/drinking!)
Lol, my initial response as well. Maybe Asianometry never heard of LOTR. 😆
As a Kiwi with a decade and half in the NZ Film industry this was a very interesting watch. Would love to see a Asianometry investigation in other NZ/ASIA Commercial interests, partnerships. (laughed @ 'does not exist')
I might look into Rogernomics
@@Asianometry brilliant. OG Neoliberal economic resuscitation carried out by the Left wing party... gonna melt minds.... and you can through in the NoNukes/ANZUS split which happened during the same election.
@@Asianometry please do it!!!! Love your content
As it happens, i have some relevant experience. 10 years ago, i was a developer on a commercial 3D engine - at the time, it was slowly failing as a game engine, we were shipping some WiiWare and XBLA shovelware, but for all intents and purposes, Unity was eating our lunch. Before Unity came about, we had the most popular indie and small-scale game engine in the region, with some AAA-ish successes. With just a couple exceptions. One, is that we have carved out a niche in virtual studio, that is all these news and weather and all kinds of TV broadcasts which were filmed against a bluescreen, so they had camera tracking, realtime compositing, and the studio would be assembled and rendered in a game engine. I didn't think this trend ever looked good or was good and as it happens, now it's dead, the virtual studios have been gone for 5 years. The second was the CG movie previsualisation. The problem is, when you're filming a movie against blue/greenscreen, where do you put the camera, what will actually be in the shot once the post production team is done with it? Previs doesn't have to look entirely photorealistic, but it has to be all the right things in the right place and it has to respond to lighting, and it solves that problem. On-set previs with camera tracking will allow the DP and director to see on a screen an adequate approximation of what they're aiming towards, on set. So that was our second hope to survive, and we were well equipped, given existing camera tracking partnership and TV foothold and the technical traits that we offered. Unfortunately, a lot of other companies also recognised the need, it was actually a massive push at the time, Crytek was actually the only big game engine players represented in this area directly, and they had a lot going for them, like A LOT, others had some sort of ad hoc tech specialised for the purpose, bound more closely to industry animation software, or were built also on top of existing game engines.
What's happening now is that Unreal is eating everyone's lunch, it's digging hard under Unity on all fronts. Indie devs are also gradually less interested in Unity, and well you have mentioned The Mandalorian yourself. What Unity needs is a foothold and some industry expertise to enter this industry. If they can get at least one major studio not going Unreal, they have at least some hope in this industry. There appear to have been a number of what i might describe as panic acquisitions by Unity just to make sure Epic/Unreal doesn't get there first.
Also it is a little funny to hear a company where core engineering on their namesake product is from Denmark and is assembled from European devs first and foremost to be described as "American" but that's the world we live in, i guess.
New Zealand isn't actually as isolated as people assume. We have produced a lot of leading digital tech companies in specific market niches. Most of these companies are unknown, because like in this case, they have a tendency to be acquired by offshore investors before they become household names.
Sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing.
@@Asianometry Our geographical isolation has really helped shield us from the ravages of Covid19 until we were able to get up to a high level of vaccination.
Being tightly integrated into the world economy puts us in an awkward position diplomatically and caught between the global superpowers of China and the United States.
@@Asianometry It's not
this is so amazing, thanks for making this doc.
There were a big controversy regarding the work culture in Weta Workshop. There were numeriuous complains on sexism and sexual herrasment culture. These scanelds time and again reported in Kiwi media and started New Zealanders put them off from Weta. Weta did not left any good legacy from Kiwi prespective. however, their work and innovation are no match in the world.
Congratulations on the 140k subscribers John!
I noticed this is the first video where you don't mention your goal of 100k in the end (still did in the video 4 days ago) so there seems to have been a bit of a jump.
It's well deserved and I'm sure my personal appreciation for your well researched and detailed videos is shared by most of these subscribers.
Good luck for the future of this channel as well as your other endeavors.
Thankssss
I'm on the VFX industry and didn't know Weta's story apart from LotR! Great job!
unity is also a great way to have arbitrary compiled and possibly hardware accelerated code run on any platform, iphone included.
Great video, I am astonished at your ability to dive into different industries and come up with well research analyses in such a short time. Keep up the good work but please take care of yourself and don´t burn up, we will be here even if you take more time.
Thanks a lot.
Another fantastic documentary. You did your homework. But if you could or be willing to cover the other players in the field of game engine software development. IMO they are more like big budget movie productions and take 5 or more years to release. Oh and they make Billions MORE after release. Support contracts alone I'm sure rake in what some small nations call their yearly budget.
Another angle to look at is how hooked is China on western software technology for media production in China. What about the companies Tencent owns? Since the CCP crackdown on Tech. Are they still viable? I hear Didi is insolvent and the CCP ordered them to de-list from the NYSE. Ten days after they had raised 44 Billion on their IPO. The stock has crashed and is 50% of it's opening value. They could just take the money and run. Then list on the Hong Kong exchange leaving the previous investors penniless.
It is a pretty fascinating topic. I can add it to the list.
Funny , you included " Deep Throat (1972) " in you movies budgets and BO success graph .
Great video!
as an asian trying to get into the animation industry, this vid is pretty informative for me.
thank you.
New Zealand is not 17 hours from Los Angeles. I flew from Vancouver to Auckland, a longer distance, in just under fourteen hours. Three movies, two meals and a nap to diagonally cross the world's largest ocean.
LA was mentioned, but he was referring to Beijing when he said ~17 hours.
9:46 (I enjoy reading Ben Thompson too)
the computer they bought was likely an SGI Onyx
I've wondered what is going on with Unity's DOTS. They've been working on it for years and people are wondering whether it's been abandoned.
meta type metaverse collab MASSIVE (agent simulation with crowd behavior stack, developed by WETA DIGITAL), UNITY is going to own EPIC in this sector.
Just look at the behind the scenes for mr beasts squid game and youll see why this makes so much sense.
Almost all the CG was done in Unreal Engine, Unity's competitor, and superimposed live so it will always match what the camera was seeing.
Unity wants to compete with unreal. Real time rendering is the next golden goose of the vfx industry
Unity and Unreal Engine both are crossing from games to movies, the metaverse vision unreal engine 5 gave us is exciting
0:40 OMG I’m in your video hahaha
"....his comprehension of story and scene structure is limited....."
-Quote from NZFC 1980 report on Peter Jackson
🤣
I suppose I can take comfort in knowing that some things don't change!
I'm afraid Meet the Feebles came out between Bad Taste and Brain Dead. Good movie, if you can stomach it.
Thanks for the video. I can’t understand the problem with semi conductors, and why ASML monopulates the market . And why other companies can’t manufacture the machines which build the chips. May you please make a video to clarify that for us since there is no enough videos over that . Thank you so indeed
Think he covered it
He's covered that at length in previous videos on ASML and Carl Zeiss.
I think my video about how ASML builds an EUV machine might help with that.
@@Asianometry ok I will watch it . Thank you 🙏
🥇
Can you save the plug till later? It's a real turn off.
I’m playing around with it. Data shows no difference
Your voice sounds strained in this episode... I hope you didn't take that bonehead, who said you sounded boring, too seriously. I'd personally rather listen to someone who sounds relaxed and with a bit slower pacing, as it gives me more time to reflect on what is being said.
Things have been rather stressful at work, lately.
@@Asianometry I'm sorry to hear. And I hope you take symptoms of stress seriously. I didn't, and now I'm on disability :-/ Take care! We'd rather you take a break for a while than disappear completely because of burn-out....
Cgi sheep?
You didn't mention Avatar and Lord of the Rings.
I am pessimistic, because of the different corporate cultures, and the tyranny of distance. I think this is a great loss, because of the human capital that has been built up in New Zealand.
My Favorite Peter Jackson movie was "Meet the Feebles" ... its sorta as if the Muppet show had an orgy and everyone got STDs.. its great if you like crass stuff
lol. Not sure if joking, but Peter Jackson is well known for making the Lord of the Rings movies. The movies you listed are not well known. lol.
This is why I love this channel. deadpan. hilarious.
It’s obviously a joke. And a hilarious one at that. Love this channel
"The movies you listed are not well known." by you...
You didn’t mention lord of the rings , what the hell lol 😂
correction please: Unity not truly American software maker, it began from Denmark.
Headquartered in San Francisco
Get ready player one lol
Your voice sounds different.
Yeah a little under the weather.
786 👍🏻 is a lucky number mine is 787 👍🏻 is progress
Hey man you got great videos overall but i dont know what got in to you this video you sound realy upset
Enough with the sheep jokes already, we get it we have lots of sheep but Aus has more
Yeah I get it, they're baaahd
@@Asianometry nah all good, I love Aus
I live in NZ…. Hilarious so called facts about NZ….
I'm glad I made you laugh.
@@Asianometry I think he was being sarcastic.
And so was I
An island filled with sheep
I wish the west would get rid of globalisation and develop everything inhouse. Young kiwis need quality training and jobs.
I lived in NZ, in the early 70's, when it was still a highly protected market. Food and housing were very affordable. Other things though, were incredibly expensive (e.g. consumer goods) because of government tarrifs. There was a huge market for second hand goods. Most families could only buy a second hand car. Our car, fridge, washing machine... etc., were all seconds, and my dad was a doctor! In real terms, clothing would have been 2-3 times the price it is now. There was also a plethora of regulations in place, to prevent foreign producers, gaining a foothold in the NZ market. For example, you could only get margarine, with a doctor's prescription, from the pharmacist. Tax payers had to pay for that administration, as well.
It had its pros and cons, but I'm not sure that younger Kiwis (i.e., anyone less than 55 years old), would accept the price hike, in consumer goods.
@@mombaassa No, Cheap junk is still JUNK !! Better to pay more for quality item. Globalisation is a CANCER ! Western industry is / has been destroyed. I live in Australia and in the 70s 80s , we produced ALL we needed, and it was a great life ! and people could get Careers ,, not now, all SH)T!
@@RemusKingOfRome Calm down! Take a deep breath
I haven't disagreed (or agreed) with you. Am only saying that too many people today, are addicted to the, throwaway culture of cheap consumer goods. I did not say, that I was in favour of it.
By the way, I live in Australia, too.
@@mombaassa I just hate how the people were SCAMMEd by criminal politicans, just to allow businesses to make more $$$$$ by exploiting foreign slave labour .. grrrrrr. .. and we import 3rd world viruses .. and the FAKE news won't tell these facts .. grrrrr
Goat meat?
The latest video from MrBeast that replicated Squid Games: rendered in real time by Unreal Engine 5.
This is misinformation. They haven't acquired Weta Digital. They have only bought the tools /softwares/devs employees. Weta Digital is still owned in majority by Peter and his associates. Stop spreading false information.
When was in said so in the video? "would acquire" 0:0