In General XR News
November 17, 2022 – Arcturus, a provider of volumetric video editing and streaming tools, has this week announced a new USD $11 million round of Series A funding led by Cloudtree Ventures, including investments from Autodesk and Epic Games. The company stated that the funding is a sign of confidence in the potential of the volumetric video market.
Along with Cloudtree, Epic Games and Autodesk, the recent Series A funding includes investments from Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, LLLP and QBN Capital. It follows an initial USD $5 million seeding round led by BITKRAFT Ventures in 2021. BITKRAFT has announced a second, separate investment in Arcturus, along with NaHCoH3, Craig Kallman and HBSE Ventures.
“We see the translation of true human performance as a fundamental building block of spatial experiences, including XR and the metaverse. Our goal is to give everyone from multinational brands to independent creators the tools they need to create authentic digital human representations in the metaverse of their choice,” said Kamal Mistry, CEO of Arcturus. “This year from Q2 to Q3 alone, we’ve seen a 270% increase in the adoption of HoloSuite, as more and more people are making the jump from creator to 3D creator.”
Arcturus stated that the Series A funding will help the company to grow its infrastructure, beginning with staffing increases in research and development, engineering and sales. Additionally, it will use the funding to continue to develop its flagship HoloSuite platform.
The company will also expand research into new AI tools to help improve the capture of 3D data with fewer cameras, and introduce new dynamic lighting and surfacing options that will improve the quality of volumetric video. Arcturus also added that it remains committed to developing new ways to enhance live streaming concerts on digital platforms, and offer viewers the ability to watch their favorite sports from any angle.
Beyond planned enhancements to HoloSuite, Arcturus will continue to develop new tools and techniques for the top 3D creation tools around the world. The company highlighted that when paired with its real-time 3D codec and editing tools, volumetric video can be used to place humans in any virtual world within the Unreal Engine, Autodesk and Unity ecosystems.
This makes it possible to populate virtual and augmented environments with live-action performances, whether for architects working on new designs, game developers building new worlds, virtual production teams filming against LED walls or VFX teams creating digidoubles, to name but a few use cases.
Arcturus also plans to further expand existing support, accessibility and capabilities of volumetric video within both Autodesk and Unreal Engine. Arcturus’ Unreal Engine tools enable creators to populate virtual production scenes with live-action talent – captured in 3D and in full movement – to create digital humans for VFX, characters for games and more. Additional tools for Unreal Engine 5 are also in development, joining a custom volumetric video player released earlier this year.
“Arcturus’ tools make it easier for creators to compress, edit and stream volumetric video,” said Alasdair Coull, chief technology officer of special projects for Epic Games. “We’ve seen firsthand how Arcturus’ tools are opening the door to broader utilization of volumetric video and we are proud to partner with Arcturus to continue to accelerate the evolution of the technology.”
For more information on Arcturus and its tools for volumetric video, please visit the company’s website.
Image / video credit: Arcturus / YouTube
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About the author
Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.