I worked in the industry and fairly closely with a number of notable Weta Engineers.
I still don't know why you'd spend 1.6billion on a VFX pipeline. I mean sure it gives you cachet, but a lot of the pipeline is mostly asset management rather than the few bits of special sauce that provide artist tooling.
but 1.6 billion is a ridiculous amount of money for a company's turnover of ~110million[1], with pretty thin profit margins, compared to a software company.
Maybe I'm wrong about weta, they did make mari after all, which is pretty special, however the foundry didn't pay anywhere near that much for mari, for what appears to be a similar licensing deal.
I still don't know why you'd spend 1.6billion on a VFX pipeline. I mean sure it gives you cachet, but a lot of the pipeline is mostly asset management rather than the few bits of special sauce that provide artist tooling.
but 1.6 billion is a ridiculous amount of money for a company's turnover of ~110million[1], with pretty thin profit margins, compared to a software company.
Maybe I'm wrong about weta, they did make mari after all, which is pretty special, however the foundry didn't pay anywhere near that much for mari, for what appears to be a similar licensing deal.
[1]https://rocketreach.co/weta-digital-profile_b5c60ffef42e0c50