DeepMotion aims to build the largest AI-generated 3D animation platform, democratizing the creation and use of digital human motion by making our technology accessible and user-friendly for diverse groups of creators, innovators, and industries. Pulse 2.0 interviewed DeepMotion AI founder and CEO Kevin He to learn more about the company.
Kevin He’s Background
What is He’s background? He said:
“As a former game developer and physics engine programmer at various studios including Blizzard, Roblox, and Disney, I have always been intrigued by the beauty and science embodied in fluent and expressive human body motions. I was fortunate to meet with a team that shares the same passion in 3D digital animations that entertain and connect millions of people. My love lies in using the first principle of physics to unleash the creative power of human minds, without the hurdle of technology.”
“An image is worth a thousand words, and one animation is worth a thousand images. So far, we’ve seen GenAI shine in word creation via large language models (LLM) and image generation via diffusion models. It is time for the GenAI industry to tackle the most advanced form of digital expression, 3D humanoid animation, now!”
Formation Of DeepMotion AI
How did the idea for the DeepMotion AI come together? He shared:
“It’s rooted in physics, as I embarked with our first product – an articulated multi-body physics simulator, that powers creatures and digital humans. Then, combined with computer vision to help users to perceive and capture the nuance of human motions from the largest repertoire of human motions to date — the vast amount of video footage that recorded our motions — we presented Animate 3D to our users. After seeing enough and feeding the AI with abundant examples of user-generated content (UGC) human animation data via Animate 3D, we evolved into the Generative Motion AI stage that starts with our next new product SayMotion.”
Greatest Achievement
What has been your greatest achievement at DeepMotion so far? He reflected:
“Building an AI motion capture platform that has democratized 3D animation creation and has provided more than one million creators with accessible 3D animation. The feedback and stories we’ve heard from our users and how it has impacted their projects has been very rewarding. We are excited to continue to build upon this technology with SayMotion.”
Core Products
How have/do you anticipate DeepMotion’s core products and features impacted the 3D animation landscape? He explained:
“The fun thing with our products is that there is a very tangible UGC output that we can follow in the creative ecosystems and see the diverse use cases for accessible 3D animation. We have provided access to many users’ first-time experience with using and creating animation. “
“Not only self-learners but also college classes have adapted our tool to educate on motion capture and 3D motion, including graduate programs exploring studies on human motion. Global animation teams have used it as a tool to work on projects remotely. There have been so many different use cases and we’re excited to see how SayMotion is going to add to accessible 3D motion as the world turns more digital.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges has He faced in building the company? He acknowledged:
“Creating a system that understands and interprets natural language input to generate 3D animations requires advanced natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. The AI must not only grasp the text’s meaning but also translate abstract concepts into visual elements. This involves extensive model training on diverse datasets to capture the nuances of language and the principles of 3D motion.”
“Building a creative platform that can generate truly diverse and original 3D animations requires ensuring you’re always building upon your dataset. To help us solve this, we turned our Animate 3D platform into an aggregator of UGC 3D animation creation via AI motion capture via labeling their natural language understanding of motions and further editing their outputs in our Rotoscope Pose Editor. In short, we’re providing free access to our Animate 3D tool to help us build and improve our new SayMotion tool!”
Industry Focus
What areas were most critical to adapting to an evolving industry? He pointed out:
“AI is centered around representative and smart data from the real world. As an AI developer, we need to create human centered models based on users’ dynamic and diversified needs. Creative collection, distilling and aggregating user generated data is one of the most critical capabilities of AI companies. At DeepMotion, we believe GenAI has to be created ‘By the People and For the People.’”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of DeepMotion’s most significant milestones and why do you think they’re critical to the future of 3D animation? He cited:
“We recently passed one million Animate 3D users who have wanted to explore our AI motion capture technology. Our platform provides full-body, hand, face and recently launched multi-person capture all from a single video.”
“SayMotion has been a huge step forward for 3D animation. We evolved past hardware needs with Animate 3D, and now we evolved past needing digital input as well – allowing users to simply speak for motions to come to life. This technology has the potential to provide creative expressions typically reserved for professionals. By lowering the barrier for creation, even more personalized and interactive media for areas like VR, AR and the Metaverse will emerge. We’re excited to see what users build when animation pipelines are sped up and non-technical members can contribute more directly to the creative process.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking He about customer success stories, he highlighted:
- Memik utilized our Animate 3D API to make a dance challenge app.
- The University of Iowa is using our AI body tracking in work settings in order to research ergonomics and workplace safety. (Paper to be published)
- Corridor Digital production studio is leveraging our AI motion capture for various CGI projects.
- Brazil’s Vilson Groh Institute used Animate 3D to educate their students about 3D animation and digital world creation.
Future Company Goals
What is DeepMotion currently working on and what are your company goals? He pointed out:
“Our main goal in past years was to build our AI animation platform to facilitate the creation, refinement and accumulation of mass animation data by providing a great service to content creators. Animate 3D achieved this goal and enabled us to roll out our most intuitive GenAI product, SayMotion, which we expect to have a great impact on entertainment, social media and the design and creative business which is a multi-billion-dollar global market.”
“Starting with more than one million existing Animate 3D users, our goal is to launch and grow SayMotion into a profitable platform of tens of millions of users. We opened a new investment round in March to support the growth of SayMotion.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? He assessed:
“Our total addressable market encompasses several key sectors including entertainment, education, healthcare, and digital content creation, targeting professionals and consumers alike. Considering the demand for efficient, accessible 3D animation across film, TV, video games, e-learning, and therapeutic applications, we estimate our TAM to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This estimate is based on current industry spending on animation, digital content production, and the growing investment in educational technology and virtual experiences.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates DeepMotion from its competition? He concluded:
“We have been developing an advanced biomechanical simulation and deep learning technologies for almost a decade. Our team has decades of experience in the gaming industry and an understanding on a deeper level how a platform like this could impact various industries. Our expertise allows us to innovate effectively and efficiently to adapt to market direction and needs.”
“As the creator of the #1 video-based AI motion capture platform, Animate 3D, we have built a mature AI motion perception and capture platform that serviced the community for over five years and assimilated the largest UGC animation dataset in a world with abundant data.”
