Fortnite’s owner and distributor Epic Games, one of the ten biggest video game companies in the world has just bought Capturing Reality, the creator of RealityCapture, an incredible photogrammetry software system which is a favorite in the world of 3D technology and modeling.
(for a more in depth look at this breaking news, see Mosaic CEO Jeffrey Martin’s take on the subject)
Epic Games and Capturing Reality: a match made in heaven
Epic Games is an apt name for itself as it has made on of the most epic games in current history: Fortnite. So what is a video game company doing acquiring 3d software you ask?
First lets have a look at current uses of 3D modeling
3D printing
VR videos
and TV series
So back to the original question, why did Epic Games buy Capturing Reality?
We believe it’s to help them built a better, more real-life 3D world for their viewers and gamers. Many video games currently depend on extremely time consuming, laborious and expensive software systems and man power to create 3D models.
But with the right software and technology, this will no longer be necessary.
In steps photogrammetry.
Photogrammetry is a technology which allows you to take multiple pictures (from 10s to 100s to 1000s and beyond) and load them into a photogrammetry software, which produces a 3D model of the original object.
This can be done for statues, objects, buildings, and whole cities. There are various softwares which can do such work, however, one of the favorites in recent years has been RealityCapture. It is fast, like really fast! Sometimes up to 100x faster for those with larger datasets, meaning the difference of days or weeks in processing time.
This sort of software can help companies create 3D images which are completely life-like without a lot of the previous work and hassle. It’s possible that in the future there will be a process in which anyone can snap some pictures, upload to Unreal Engine (the true-to-life reality creator) and with some sophisticating processing, produce an image that any human eye would perceive as 100% real.
Read more about the fusion of these two epic companies and what this will mean for the 3D and photography world by checking out Jeffrey Martin’s take on this here.
