Unity opens Canadian office

Game engine company Unity has opened a new office in Canada.

The move into the country came about as a result of Unity’s acquisition of Montreal-based animation technology start-up Mécanim. The Quebec outfit was founded by Robert Lanciault, Sonny Myette and Pierre-Paul Giroux, who between them count experience in developing animation technology in Motion Builder, HumanIK and the FBX SDK.

“Adding the amazing Mécanim team to Unity Technologies is a huge win,” said Joachim Ante, CTO of Unity Technologies (pictured). “Integrating what we believe will be the future of computer animation into Unity is exhilarating, and I look forward to showing it to our users. We’re confident they’ll be blown away.”

“Seeing Mécanim animation technology tightly integrated in the Unity game engine is an exciting culmination of years of experience and development,” added now-Unity Canada man Lanciault.

“Becoming an integral part of Unity gives us direct access to internal animation asset representation, a run-time evaluation engine and even a game editor. Unity will be the first game engine to ship with a deeply integrated next-gen animation solution. We’re proud to be part of a company like Unity Technologies that so actively looks to improve its own technology.”

Founded in 2009, Mécanim was was formed by former staff of Kaydara, which itself was acquired by Alias and subsequently Autodesk.

According to a statement to the press made at Unity’s ongoing Unite 11 developer conference, the engine company sees establishing a base in Canada as vital to reinforcing its position as a globally important game technology provider.