UK Govt Backs Geomerics to Revolutionize the Movie Industry

Geomerics, an ARM company, has won backing from the UK's Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to bring its real-time graphics rendering techniques from the gaming world to the big screen. The award, worth £1million, will enable Geomerics and its partners to take a revolutionary step for filmmakers, allowing instant rendering of complex animation sequences, saving cost and production time.

Real-time computer graphics technology can now meet the quality demands of both film and television, said Dr Chris Doran, director, Geomerics. Providing our lighting technology to big screen filmmakers enables them to deliver movies with compelling visual experiences faster and for less money with the quality that moviegoers expect. This will be a dramatic shift in the industry's production practices.

The funding, made available by the U.K.'s Technology & Strategy Board (TSB), is part of the Cross Platform Production in Digital Media' competition announced last year. The TSB's goal is to accelerate UK economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. The digital economy is a strategic focus, and it views the game and film industries as crucial players.

Geomerics' competition entry created interest because of its potential to make the film, television and on-line video services industry more efficient. One of the most time-consuming parts of the editing process where computer-generated effects are used is in rendering, particularly lighting. At present filmmakers edit sequences offline and then render them to bring them up to full quality which can take 8-24 hours. By contrast, the gaming world has had to develop real-time rendering techniques so complex full-quality graphics sequences can be instantly produced on consoles and mobile phones.

Geomerics' Enlighten real time global illumination technology is already used in mainstream games such as Battlefield 3 and 4, Need for Speed Rivals, Eve Online, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The company is now focused on developing interactive workflows for producing high-end graphics and lighting across all media types.

Geomerics comes from Cambridge's so-called Silicon Fen area and became part of ARM, the UK's most successful technology export company, in December 2013.

About Geomerics

Geomerics delivers cutting-edge graphics technology to customers in the games and entertainment industries. The company's Enlighten technology is behind the lighting in best-selling titles including Battlefield 4, Need for Speed: Rivals, Plants versus Zombies: Garden Warfare, Eve Online and Quantum Conundrum. Geomeric's Enlighten revolutionary technology brings global illumination to real-time gaming. For the first time, all aspects of lighting can be updated in real time, in game, on todays consoles. Instant feedback opens up new worlds of creative possibilities for gamers and artists alike. Visit http://www.geomerics.com for more information.

In 2013, Geomerics was acquired by ARM, the company at the heart of the worlds most advanced digital products. ARM technology enables the creation of new markets and transformation of industries and society, with scalable, energy efficient-processors and related technologies to deliver the intelligence in applications ranging from sensors to servers, including smartphones, tablets, enterprise infrastructure and the Internet of Things. ARM Partners have shipped more than 50 billion ARM-based Systems on Chip (SoCs) since the company began in 1990.

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