Vicon acquires Captive Devices

Vicon has acquired Captive Devices, a Manchester-based company that provides head-mounted cameras and software for motion capturing facial performances. 

Captive Devices’ founding team joins Vicon immediately, and has previously worked with the likes of Ninja Theory, Nant Studios, Animatrik and Deep Silver Dambuster Studios. Vicon hopes that the acquisition will bolster its motion capture services, adding facial capture to its system for bodies and wider areas. 

Imogen O’Connor, CEO of Oxford Metrics, Vicon’s parent company, said: “This acquisition is a natural fit for Vicon and Captive Devices, culturally and technologically. Vicon can now offer customers a more integrated, end-to-end body and face capture workflow that enables them to capture, analyze and animate human performance with even greater efficiency than before.”

She added: “These are exactly the kind of targeted investments we want to make in Vicon – adding differentiated technology and specialist expertise in areas that build seamlessly onto our existing strengths.” 

David “Ed” Edwards, product lead for entertainment and hardware at Vicon, said: “This pairing closes a real gap for studios in film, games and virtual production. Body and facial performance capture have always come from separate vendors with separate pipelines. Now it’s one system, one team and one support line.”  

Fred Isaac, co-founder, Captive Devices, said: “Joining Vicon gives us the manufacturing scale, sales distribution and global support network to put CoreHMC in front of far more studios than we could reach alone. The technology, the team and the way we serve customers remains the same. Now we’re joining a team who’s spent decades building trust with exactly the studios we want to reach.”