LOS ANGELES — Glassbox Technologies (glassboxtech.com) is a new LA-based software developer that’s bringing the power and efficiency of realtime technologies to content creators in the feature films, television, animation, games and mixed reality businesses. Glassbox (formerly known as Opaque Studio) was co-founded by CEO Norman Wang and chief product officer Mariana Acuña-Acosta. Collectively, the team brings together knowledge of game engines, mixed reality platforms, VFX and production experience to create platform-agnostic, realtime, virtual-production toolsets.
Photo (L-R): The Glassbox team of Philippa Carroll, Norman Wang, Mariana Acuña-Acosta and Andrew Britton
Glassbox is now in private beta of Unreal Engine, Unity 3D and Autodesk Maya solutions that will ultimately be made publicly available later this year.
“We believe that game engines and realtime technology have the power to revolutionize filmmaking and visualization across industries, and we’ve been hard at work developing tools that will help creative teams achieve their goals with simple, off-the-shelf packages that integrate with whichever game engine and digital content creation applications they prefer,” says Acuña-Acosta. “Our team is excited today to unveil our new name and new tools to the wider community for the first time.”
Glassbox has collaborated with visualization and production studios, such as The Third Floor, and game engine developers Unreal Engine and Unity 3D to develop its realtime virtual production solutions.
DragonFly is one of its upcoming releases. The cross-platform virtual camera gives filmmakers the ability to view seamless integration of CG environments and characters in realtime, whether through the camera’s viewfinder, an external monitor, an iPad, or a virtual reality headset. DragonFly is compatible, off-the-shelf, with Unreal, Unity and Maya, plus a wide range of tracking solutions including OptiTrack, and ARKit.
BeeHive is a multi-user toolkit for realtime collaboration, review and synchronization, connecting and managing virtual production workflows - both local and distributed. Streamlining the exchange of data between cameras, DCC applications and game engines, the cross-platform tool lets teams review and modify assets, iterate on lighting and VFX, and visualize entire virtual worlds in realtime – manipulating content and viewing results in Maya, Unreal or Unity.
Glassbox is also the developer of Live Client for Unreal Engine. The plug-in connects Faceware’s Live Server to the Unreal Engine, enabling realtime markerless facial capture and animation within game engine.
Pros can visit the Glassbox Website to apply for beta testing opportunities.
In related news, Glassbox has added Philippa Carroll and Andrew Britton to its team as chief sales and marketing officer and chief technology officer, respectively. Carroll previously spent many years leading Foundry’s media production product division, responsible for all business strategy, product management and marketing for tools such as Nuke, Nuke Studio, Katana, Mari, Flix and CaraVR.
Britton most recently served as head of software development for Holochip, where he developed a realtime light field display renderer and led software development for the R&D team. He previously served as CBS Digital’s head of technology for six years, building the studio's asset, production and color pipelines, in addition to delivering custom R&D for television production hardware, computer vision software and virtual production solutions.