Acquisition of Autodesk, the 3D tools giant Wonderful dynamics, a startup that permits creators to quickly and easily create complex characters and visual effects using AI-powered image evaluation. The two firms have been working closely together for years, but today they officially announced this decision.
Founded by VFX artist Nikola Todorovic and actor Tye Sheridan, Wonder Dynamics essentially made adding motion-captured CG characters to your footage so simple as dragging an icon onto the actor.
But Wonder Studio, as its flagship tool is called, was never a toy, even if it may very well be used that way. With years of experience in the film industry, the co-founders were clear from the starting that this was a tool for professionals, providing all the detailed mockups, animations and masking that visual effects people needed to do their jobs.
They were careful to say then – and during the screenwriters’ and actors’ strikes – that the goal was to empower creators, not replace them.
TechCrunch covered the company’s 2021 debut while it was still in stealth mode after raising a $2.5 million seed round. Later that 12 months, they raised an additional $10 million and eventually transformed Wonder Studio into a fully cloud-hosted web platform.
As a supplier of Maya software, one of the strongest and durable tools for 3D work and multimedia production, Autodesk naturally got noticed.
“Last year we integrated with Maya via a plugin, so you can streamline this process in the character studio. It has been an industry-leading software for decades, so we wanted to make it easier for those users to use it. We started talking to them and one thing led to another,” Todorovic told TechCrunch.
“We have tried to blend the old with the new, enabling new solutions within processes that artists already use, and this partnership is a perfect example of that,” Sheridan added. Not that Autodesk is “old,” the two were quick to clarify (though few would call it young).
The problems surrounding artificial intelligence in media, from film to promoting to music, stem from what each see as misconceptions about each technology and art.
“There are new tools and new waves of artificial intelligence coming, but I think a lot of them underestimate what artists have to do and how hard they work,” Todorovic said. “We know – we came from this space. You and I are artists; we did this to enable artists to do things they couldn’t do before. Because we don’t want a future where the artist isn’t involved or asked – that’s not filmmaking for me. Autodesk deeply understands that this is a collaborative and iterative process.”
“People have a convincing belief that we’re going to start making movies using artificial intelligence, but I think the people making those conclusions don’t really understand the industry well or don’t understand the limitations of these tools,” Sheridan said. “The key is to use them as an additional part of the process – learning what is profitable where and how to fill the gap.”
Both founders will join Autodesk with their full staff; Todorovic said he doesn’t expect any changes in the short term and that any changes that do occur needs to be positive for users. “That’s the thing with start-ups: you have to choose what to do and which direction to go” – attributable to lack of resources. The acquisition of Autodesk should enable them to speed up and develop, although the company declined to propose specific directions.
Other requests for details, resembling contract terms, were politely declined. I asked Autodesk about the acquisition, and Diana Colella, vice chairman of entertainment and media solutions, emphasized that the company matches perfectly with their existing strategy.
“Autodesk has been working on AI technologies for over a decade, and we have already incorporated several AI tools into our existing M&E products,” she wrote in an email. “But we haven’t yet worked on anything that does exactly what they do, so their work is very complementary to the AI work we’re already doing.”
As for the immediate future, “Our immediate goal is continuity,” Colella said. Don’t expect any big changes like switching to a latest account or completely rebranding. Of course, if you are a fan of Wonder Studio, you are probably already using Maya anyway.