Cubic Motion

Cubic Motion operates as a specialized studio in performance-driven facial animation, leveraging advanced computer vision and machine learning technologies. Founded in 2009 by a group of PhDs from the University of Manchester, the company established its headquarters at the Manchester Science Park. Much of the underlying technology stems from the foundational work of founder Dr. Gareth Edwards, whose research in "Active Appearance Models" at the university became a cornerstone for the company's approach to imaging and animation.

The firm primarily serves the video game and film production industries, providing high-fidelity digital facial animation for a roster of prominent clients including Activision, Electronic Arts (EA), and Sony. Its technology has been instrumental in creating lifelike characters for major video game titles such as "God of War," "Marvel's Spider-Man," and "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice." The business model combines service-based animation production with a product offering. The company's production teams collaborate directly with game developers, while its proprietary software, developed entirely in-house, is also offered as a product line to strategic partners. This dual approach allows studios to either outsource complex animation challenges or integrate Cubic Motion's technology into their own pipelines.

Cubic Motion's core product, Persona, is an end-to-end system for capturing an actor's facial performance and translating it onto a digital character in real-time. This system utilizes marker-less video tracking, analyzing an actor's facial appearance and matching it with a bespoke solver model created through machine learning algorithms for a specific digital character rig. This process significantly reduces the time required for high-quality facial animation, cutting down production timelines from months to minutes in some cases. A key milestone was the September 2017 growth capital investment from NorthEdge, which facilitated expansion into the U.S. market with an office in Los Angeles. In March 2020, Epic Games acquired Cubic Motion, integrating its vision and animation technology with Epic's Unreal Engine and 3Lateral's facial rigging technology to advance the creation of believable digital humans.

Keywords: facial animation, computer vision, real-time animation, performance capture, digital humans, video game development, character animation, machine learning, motion capture, Unreal Engine, 3D animation, visual effects, animation services, virtual reality, character rigging, digital media, film production, animation technology, marker-less tracking, game animation