Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Sony Innovation Studios has acquired Nurulize, a startup whose software lets users edit, color and enhance volumetrically captured images in a real-time collaborative environment.
Terms of the acquisition aren’t being disclosed. Under the deal, Nurulize’s 12 employees are joining Sony Innovation Studios, which the company launched last year to give producers a way to virtually capture physical sets and use those digital assets in a variety of ways.
Nurulize’s Atom View software “enables us to integrate the highest-quality volumetric data capture with traditional workflows for film, television, and gaming, ushering a new method of content creation — the blending of the digital and the real — in truly innovative ways,” said Glenn Gainor, president of Sony Innovation Studios and head of physical production for Screen Gems.
SPE has used Nurulize’s technology on several projects, including to capture a virtual model of the “Men in Black: International” 52,000-square-foot movie set in the U.K. The “MIB” virtual set was used for an NBA Finals co-promotional spot with the film’s co-stars, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson (pictured above) which aired on ESPN and ABC. That saved producers money on overseas travel costs, set decoration and time.
Sony Innovation Studios used the same process to create a virtual model of the exit interview set on ABC’s “Shark Tank” last year, which won an Advanced Imaging Society Award for best use of virtual production.
Culver City, Calif.-based Nurulize was founded in 2013 by software development and VFX industry veterans Philip Lunn and Scott Metzger. It raised $2 million in seed funding led by Chaos Group, a CGI rendering software developer.
SPE’s flagship partners in building the Sony Innovation Studios are Deloitte Digital, Dell and Intel.