Mixamo () is a

3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

technology company. Based in San Francisco, the company develops and sells web-based services for 3D character animation. Mixamo's technologies use

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

methods to automate the steps of the character animation process, including

3D modeling In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, a ...

to rigging and

3D animation Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

. Mixamo is spun-off of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and has raised over $11 million from investors

Granite Ventures Granite Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in San Francisco, California. Granite's predecessor H&Q Venture Associates, founded in 1992, was the venture capital investment arm of Hambrecht & Quist, a leading technology oriented inv ...

, Keynote Ventures,

and AMD Ventures. Mixamo was acquired by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the cre ...

in 2015.

History

Mixamo was founded in 2008 by Stefano Corazza and Nazim Kareemi as a spin-off of Stanford University's Biomotion Lab, and started out as a cloud-based service offering animations and automatic character rigging. It launched its first online animation service in 2009. In 2010, Mixamo worked with Evolver to provide characters to customers. Later

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...

acquired Evolver and made it proprietary, but Mixamo had already begun work on its own character creation service. Mixamo released its automatic rigging service in 2011. That was followed by the launch of its real-time facial animation product, Face Plus, in 2013, and the official launch of its Fuse 3D character creator software in March 2014. In August 2014, Mixamo launched a new pricing structure. Mixamo was acquired by

on June 1, 2015.

Fuse

In March 2014, Mixamo officially launched Fuse Character Creator at

Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tuto ...

. Fuse stems out of the research done by Siddhartha Chaudhuri which originated within Vladlen Koltun's research group at Stanford and Substance technology from Allegorithmic. An early version of the service had been released in November 2013. It allows users to create a 3D character by assembling customizable body parts, clothing and textures together. Those characters can then be exported into other

3D model In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, an ...

software packages or

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software ...

. In March 2014, Mixamo launched Fuse 1.0 on Steam with the ability of importing and integrating user generated content in the character creation system. Fuse was updated to allow the importation and editing of character models generated by Microsoft's Kinect 2.0 in August of that year. Development of Fuse was discontinued in September 2019. On September 13, 2020, the program was removed from the

Adobe Creative Cloud Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe Inc. that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applications an ...

and is no longer available for download from Adobe. Version 1.3 is still available for download on the Steam Marketplace.

Rigging service

This service has been discontinued for keeping custom 3D models and models uploaded via fuse CC on Adobe's servers. You can still upload custom 3D model to the online auto rigging service and rig them, but they won't be kept. Mixamo also provides an online, automatic model rigging service known as the Auto-Rigger, which was the industry's first online rigging service. The AutoRigger applies machine learning to understand where the limbs of a 3D model are and to insert a "skeleton", or rig, into the 3D model as well as calculating the skinning weights. The service can take up to 2 minutes.

3D Character Animation

Mixamo's online services include an animation store featuring downloadable 3D models and animation sequences. The animations were created at Mixamo using

motion capture Motion capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robo ...

and cleaned up by key frame animators. All its animations work with characters created in Fuse and/or rigged with Mixamo's AutoRigger.

Real-time facial animation

August 2013, Mixamo released Face Plus, a

game development tool A game development tool is a specialized software application that assists or facilitates the making of a video game. Some tasks handled by tools include the conversion of assets (such as 3D models, textures, etc.) into formats required by the g ...

that allows users to record facial animation data of themselves using a standard webcam and apply the animation to a character inside the

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a ...

in real-time. Face Plus was briefly included in the keynote presentation at the Unite conference in Vancouver. The technology was developed in collaboration with AMD. and uses

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

acceleration. The animated short "Unplugged" was created using Face Plus technology and as of April 2014 has won several awards. Face Plus has been discontinued and according to a September 2017 Adobe Forum post by Adobe staff JMathews, no further work on the product was being contemplated at that time.

References

External links

"Mixamo’s Facial Expression Capturing Technology Helps Indie Developers Speed Up Character Animation"
from

Techcrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical. Goi ...

Official site

Unplugged – Official site
{{Adobe Inc. Entertainment software Software companies based in California Animation software Stanford University American companies established in 2008 Companies based in San Francisco 2008 establishments in California Software companies established in 2008 2015 mergers and acquisitions Adobe Inc.