Roblox Acquires Loom.ai, Accelerating Development of Avatar Realism and Emotions
Roblox Acquires Loom.ai, Accelerating Development of Avatar Realism and Emotions
Roblox, a global online platform bringing millions of people together through play, announced today the acquisition of Loom.ai, a privately-held company specializing in real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars, using deep learning, computer vision, and VFX. We believe as people share experiences virtually, their avatars should have the ability to express a full range of emotions, said David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox. Loom.ai will accelerate making human co-experiences more immersive and personal, adding world-class facial animation technology as part of Robloxs efforts to provide expressive emotive actions to avatars that will enable deeper connections for our community.
User-generated gaming platform Roblox announced the acquisition of Loom.ai for an undisclosed sum.
Loom.ai is a San Francisco-based startup founded by former LucasFilm and DreamWorks staff. Created in 2016, it specialises in real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars.
With this purchase, Roblox wants to accelerate the development of next-generation avatars, as Loom.ai s solutions aim at accurately replicating emotions and facial expressions. That means that Roblox players could interact with each other in-game in a life-like, interactive way, Roblox said in its announcement.
The Californian company also gave the example of players watching an in-game concert and being able to actually see the facial expressions of the artist. Roblox has organised several virtual concerts this year, including One World: Together At Home, which it organised to raise awareness of COVID-19 relief efforts, and a Lil Nas X gig that attracted over 33 million people in November.
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Global online platform, Roblox has reported the acquisition of Loom.ai to accelerate development of Avatar Realism and Emotions. Loom.ai is a company that specializes in real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars by utilizing computer vision, deep learning and VFX. “We believe as people share experiences virtually, their avatars should have the ability to express a full range of emotions,” said David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox. “Loom.ai will accelerate making human co-experiences more immersive and personal, adding world-class facial animation technology as part of Roblox’s efforts to provide expressive emotive actions to avatars that will enable deeper connections for our community.”