Did Unity kill Weta FX?!!
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- Опубликовано: 6 дек 2023
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You know what? If you fire 250+ engineers, of course they won't be unemployed. They'll go to the #1 competitor and help make Unreal even more invincible.
I have never seen anything positive happen from a company aquisition. I was working at a VFX company that got aquired, and they pretty much gutted the company and made everything worse. All the old artists went off and had to form their own company.
Weta was one of the best companies, and it's so sad seeing this happen to them.
The VFX industry is already in termoil from the writers/actors strikes. So many friends and colleges havebeen laid off and not had their contracts renewed. Work is dry in the VFX world, and there's no new jobs. The strikes started around April, and anyone who lost their job back then has been unemployed for almost a year. Things are crazy, and this is the worst time for this to happen to Weta.
WetaFX is fine. It's Weta Digital which was a spin off of WetaFX made to sell software that got the boot. All that will happen is that they will go back to Weta and create more software. Weta is like ILM, they are a huge VFX house. Not saying they are too big to fail but they get a lot of shows and they have a lot of prestige projects under their belts (including the Avatar franchise).
I worked in the undustry for over 20 years. I'm glad I found greener pastures.
Weta FX is still there which is run by Peter Jackson who does Film VFX. Unity bought the tool development which carried the name Weta Digital and the VFX studio was names Weta FX. Unity took the tools owned and developed by Weta Digital and laid off almost all the employees. The Weta Digital name was moved back to Weta FX but there's no current plan to do anything with it.
so they bought their tools and then fired weta digital developers? why tho? do they have better team or what
@@nebula_eater Seems like a trademark buyout to me. They bought the product, laid off staff and then put the project on ice likely to never be used again. Lots of companies do this to kill off competition or to hold IP's until their master branch fails.
Was likely done for no reason other than market disruption leading up to their huge bombshell announcement.
It isn't run by Peter Jackson, he sold his share of Weta
@@nebula_eaterno better team. Weta FX hired back the most engineers they could. Weta FX will still develop and maintain the technology, but it’s still property of Unity for most of it. They will still develop and create new tools and use their existing ones for their VFX and tech project, but the plans of Unity to commercialize the Weta tech products/tools to the VFX industry is uncertain, even dead. Some of us who would like to have access to the Weta tools by buying Unity some licenses or subscriptions won’t see that happening anytime soon. Personally I think Unity will give back Weta full ownership of their technology in the next years because their plans are to get out of the VFX industry and focus on games as before. They just tried to compete with Epic but it didn’t end well for them that’s all. If they don’t reset/restructure themselves, they will disappear violently.
That's a win for WetaFX. 1.6 billion paycheck and they can hire Weta Digital talent back :)
They are still the only film VFX studio using Spectral Pathtracing (like Octane) - the most physically correct light transport simulation algorithm. Actually simulating light as a wave! (Arnold, Renderman, Vray, cycles, are only primitive RGB tracers)
Being fair, there is an unstable spectral branch of cycles (with some pretty good results with the limted features). And luxcore used to be fully spectral (with some debate about returning), and there are a few other spectral renderers in existence of course.
@@rubyrude.infinite Yea, ive got my eye on upcoming “Spectral Cycles”! I love the speed of Luxcore, but it doesn’t currently support industry standards like UDIMS. Which is a huge red flag. When I was animating on Star Wars Mandalorian the characters each had like 30+ 8K UDIMS😵💫
I only listed Octane cause its still the only “Stable & Production Ready” spectral option.
Indigo render is another option, but I bought it and quickly realized its development is under-powered.
The only people who are safe in this "reset" are the top and middle level management. They can always
persuade the decision makers who are also outsiders that they are the essential workforce of the company, leaving the really backbone of the team to be fired.
Unity bought the VFX tools division of Weta not Weta FX. 'Related IP' is going back to Wētā FX after the end of the Unity agreement. (It's confusing but that's what wikipedia says.)
So Peter Jackson made a boat load of cash and still keeps Weta FX for movie production - He's smart guy.
Unity bought weta? I had no idea
Not Weta, but the technology of Weta.
What they were hoping for, a hobby game engine becoming underlying system for Holywood? Their 2nd place was more than adequate for them, instead of working toward their user base they decided to compete with Unreal on their home turf...
Mike from games from scratch suggested that a lot of the problems at Unity stem from apples, advertising rejig. Interesting video.
Unity is rushing, they're trying to keep up with Unreal.
Is Unity even worth using anymore? I had a class on game engines where we used about three or four of them. There was something I really liked about Unity. Then, I had a break from the University that I attend and I was going to start working on a game of my own, and that is around the time that Unity caused an uproar earlier this year when they announced that publishers would be paying a fee everytime someone installs their game. I ended up putting my game on hold... then school started up again, etc. I know someone said that Unity reversed their policies but the damage is pretty much done.
It seems trying to compete wth unreal on the film VFX side of the market is what
brought them to this point.
Even Epic has had to scale back and do some layoffs after several acquisitions of their own.
Film and television VFX are still better left to Houdini & Maya not tacked on to game engines.
Looks a lot like they were trying to kill of market competition rather than acquire new tech. Seems like pretty common business practice these days to buy new "upcoming" tech and put it on ice. Which in turn completely kills any work on that product until another team spends a few years getting another up and running.
A lot like what food chains do with small businesses. They will buy out local food shops in the area and either leave them vacant forever or resell them to people wanting to put up anything other than foods shops. Kills competition in the area giving the company a few years of maximum profit before more fooderies open up in the area.
@@hogandromgool2062 Weta has never been a competition for Unity. Totally different things. Unity just wanted to expand into that territory, but they didn`t do anything with it.
@@maythesciencebewithyou Would be inclined to agree if Weta wasn't developing an engine at the time. I'm from New Zealand and I've followed weta for years hoping they would complete it, mainly because I'm an NZ game dev and I thought it would be cool to have at least one of my games completely made here.
Should have used that moment from 300. Where kicks the dude.That would be hilarous🤣🤣🤣🤣
4:44 I honestly forgot all about the Metaverse, is that still a thing?
It has to be, because how else would you burn trillions of printed dollars if not on NFCs and useless pixels in Metaverse. The Government doesn't want huge inflation, so they will try to find a way to burn it off somehow, the stocks no longer work because they are unhealthy inflationary as well.
I was really surprised that foundry didn't purchase weta digital. Seems like those products or range of products would be ideal for them. Though Modo has started to slip and last time I used Mari I quickly switched back to substance. Has it got any better?
Don’t get it twisted. Foundry is not getting that well either.
Don’t be surprised if you heard them too, trying to restructure themselves in the future.
@@miriadesI don't know about the Foundry woes. Explains mari loosing pole position to substance and modos update being lacklustre
@@ZigUncut Houdini’s taking over Katana too. Because users tend to prefer Solaris more and more for different reasons.
It’s always crazy to me how so many VFX companies have been lost over the years, and how usually 100’s of thousands of dollars if not millions go into this industry but still so many people get laid off or companies lost.. it’s actually mind blowing.
It’s usually greed and those at the top cashing out. It rarely helps the industry. If it wasn’t greed every employee could have walked away a millionaire and the founders would still have millions to play with. Welcome to capitalism where only the few make money, and the rest are made to suffer.
wow!
So Weta Studio got 1.6B for their tools and tool makers, still gets to use their tools, then a short while later is planning on getting most of their tool makers back.
It would have been easier for Unity to just hand over 1.6B and be done with it.
I believe it was done for market disruption. Weta also makes games, while buying the tools they also bought most of their game dev team, then promptly fired them. A lot of these employees will feel done over Weta and move on to other companies rather than being hired back. This causes another hole in the game dev industry. On top of that Weta was in the middle of making their own game engine when they were bought. Unity shortly started putting everything in place to drop their new pricing changes.
Seems just like Unreal, they try their hardest to buy out anything that maybe an issue for them. Unreal has bout 4 projects for upwards of 50 million and killed all of them for what I assume is the same reason. The tech was a threat to their longevity so they killed them off.
@@hogandromgool2062Oh I didn’t know Weta were developing their own game engine. That make sense 🤔
what is weta digital?
It seems that to me that the market is going to have access to new tech soon.
Does all companies just want to be acquired? Of course employees can continue to work but there's a high risk of everything going to crap
We've seen how Adobe/ Autodesk bought technologies and slow down their R&D after going public on stock market. Unity are heading towards the same direction and their monetization will get worse since they have to recover from $1.6 billion financial loss as soon as possible
Whenever there is acquisition or merger, hundreds of employees fired from jobs. We can see in every industry.
real talk tho because I do love Weta... they do a shit ton of work with other companies, including work on Marvels movies, Love death Robots, and Dune. This company is huge in the industry. Whilst maybe they took a blow, certainly far from killed
James M. Whitehurst lasted a year in IBM and 5 years in Delta Airline.
He has hardly any background in gaming, 3d modeling and animation, filming or anything of the sort.
that is kind of sad news
My deer weta my deer the lord of the ring 😢😢
So this is why they raised their fees to astronomical levels unfairfully...
Where is blender in this video ? 😂
So.... much.... padding.... I couldn't finish.
Dayms
Second. Weta are legendary!
Massive is not owned by Wētā and wasn’t part of the Unity deal.
Unity does not own or has ever own Weta FX which has over a 1000 staff. they axe the tool division which they aquired. however such changes is not really unusually. Sony axe their software tool division for playstation too, and AMD hired the staff the next day in an intentionally planned restructuring between the 2 companies, and playstation actually became alot healthier after getting out of tool development. the only issue here is if Unity handled the IP well. Sony ensures all their IP and tech end up in AMD and the same worker basically continued develop on the same product just under a different company... if Unity hand on to the IP and refuse to continue work on them, then those tech will become lost over time as other companies develop better tools.
They didn’t but the whole company… they bought a dev group…. Get your facts straight and quit making click bait
Unity bought weta?
Sorry, but i think that people do not understand the difference between VFX and real-time GFX. Sure, i guess that people expect a real-time game to look like a photorealistic film. And that is created using VFX technology. I worked in VFX and also a long time in real-time GFX. Both areas are about creating images in the end. But the workflow is completely different. Film making is a different way of using graphics in comparison to rendering something in real-time for an interactive game. Unreal generated a very good rendering technology that is made for games, but it also works, in parts, for filmmaking. Not the other way around. Using technology that was made for film production for game creation is not a good approach. It is too specialized on the film workflow. I asked myself the question why Unity would by Weta. I couldn't find the answer. Besides the high price, Unity has to invest a lot of time and money to get something out of the Weta tech in the end. Unreal did the perfect move. They concentrated on game creation, and they created new technologies like Nanite and also GI rendering methods. The new materials are very good as well. Metahumans and several other tools complete the package. That can be used for interactive design, games and also films. Unity, in my opinion, is missing a lot of those features. If we think about Quixel and the combination with Nanite, it shows how well Epic planned their engine. We will see what AI will bring to the table in the next time but at the moment, I have to say, Epic is the better choice. And i used Unity for 10 years already. But i am happy that I started to learn Unreal in the last 4 years as well.
Here we go again! People are panicking over Weta FX's closure. Wrong! Unity only owned the tools and the Weta Digital name. Weta FX, the former Weta Digital, is still going strong, making effects for films, with a wide spread of projects in development. So how can people take this the wrong way, when in reality, Weta FX remains in operation?
First♥️
I just entered to this video only to comment that WETA stand in chilean spanish for someone who is a totally a** hole
😅
Insane how you don't even research this before making a video. Weta Workshop was never bought by Unity, they bought the tools department and are now shutting that down.
I really don`t get unity anymore. They could have done great things with it, but they are letting it rot. Other software has advanced so much, that Weta doesn`t really have the value anymore, it just has it`s name. Instead they are focusing on things nobody wants, damaging what was once a great game engine for Indie developers.
unity will buy unreal soon
stupied guy