Epic's two digital-human acquisitions landed a year apart

The persona

No persona changed hands here; two studios did. 3Lateral, a Serbia-based digital-human technology developer, and Cubic Motion, a UK-based facial-animation and performance-capture developer, are the companies behind the face and body pipeline used to build Siren, the real-time digital character this site covers separately. Epic Games announced its acquisition of 3Lateral first, then Cubic Motion more than a year later, and both companies' work eventually fed into what Epic now sells as its MetaHuman toolset.

What the documents establish

Epic's own announcement, published 23 January 2019 and bylined Dana Cowley, states that "3Lateral, the leading developer of digital humans technology and creative content, has joined with Epic in an acquisition," citing a shared history that includes "A Boy and His Kite," "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice," and the "Siren" and "Digital Andy Serkis" demonstrations. It quotes 3Lateral founder Vladimir Mastilovic, who would lead Epic's worldwide digital-humans effort, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. Cubic Motion's deal is a separate, later event: Epic's announcement, published 12 March 2020, states "today we are thrilled to welcome Cubic Motion to the Epic Games family," noting that "3Lateral joined the Unreal Engine team in January 2019" as a distinct, earlier milestone. It quotes Cubic Motion CEO Dr. Gareth Edwards and Epic CTO Kim Libreri, and credits Cubic Motion's earlier work on the first live "Hellblade" character performance at GDC 2016 and "Meet Mike" at SIGGRAPH 2017. Neither post discloses a purchase price or other financial terms.

Character versus company

Siren, Digital Andy Serkis, Senua and Meet Mike are demonstration and game characters that exist only because of the real people and companies named in these two announcements: Mastilovic, Edwards, Sweeney and Libreri, confirming real corporate acquisitions on specific, documented dates. This entry's own slug uses "2019" as a label, and that year is accurate for 3Lateral's deal alone; Cubic Motion's acquisition is a separate transaction that closed roughly fourteen months later, in March 2020, not the same year. Collapsing both into a single "2019" event, as an informal retelling might, is a factual error the primary announcements themselves correct.

What to watch

Neither release states what Epic paid for either company. This is an editorial note: readers tracking Epic's digital-human strategy should watch how 3Lateral's rigging technology and Cubic Motion's solving technology surfaced together in later Epic products, since both announcements point toward the same long-term goal of what Epic calls "democratizing" realistic digital-human creation inside Unreal Engine.

• Does a secondary account date both acquisitions to the same year, and if so, does it cite a primary source for that claim?
• What financial terms, if any, has either company or Epic disclosed since these announcements?
• How did 3Lateral's and Cubic Motion's specific technologies reappear in Epic's later MetaHuman toolset?

Read together, the two announcements describe a deliberate, sequential build-out of Epic's digital-human capability, not a single bundled acquisition, and the year attached to each deal matters to getting that sequence right.