Mixamo
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| Mixamo | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Industry | 3D computer graphics, character animation |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Stefano Corazza, Nazim Kareemi |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Notable Personnel | Nazim Kareemi (CEO at the 2009 launch), Stefano Corazza (CTO at launch; later CEO) |
| Products | Mixamo animation service, Auto-Rigger, Fuse, Face Plus, The Decimator |
| Parent | Adobe (from 2015) |
| Website | https://www.mixamo.com |
Mixamo is a web-based service for rigging and animating 3D characters, and the name of the San Francisco company that built it before Adobe bought it in 2015.[1] The company was co-founded in 2008 by Stefano Corazza and Nazim Kareemi and grew out of research at Stanford University's BioMotion Lab.[2][3] Its tools let users upload a humanoid model, have a skeleton and skin weights added automatically, and apply motion-captured animations from an online library.[4]
Under Adobe, Mixamo is free for anyone with an Adobe ID and does not require a Creative Cloud subscription, although Adobe's help pages say it is not available for Enterprise and Federated IDs or for users with a country code from China. Its characters and animations may be used royalty free in personal, commercial and non-profit projects.[5] Its link to VR and AR is through content creation for animated characters and avatars: Corazza described the company in 2014 as helping people "represent themselves in virtual reality",[6] and Adobe documented a workflow for bringing Mixamo characters into its AR authoring app Adobe Aero.[7]
History
Founding and launch
Mixamo announced its debut as a company in July 2009, saying it had already been operating for more than a year. The launch announcement named Nazim Kareemi as CEO and Stefano Corazza as CTO. Kareemi had co-founded the 3D sensor company Canesta in 1999 and founded PenWare in 1992. Corazza had worked as a research associate at the Stanford BioMotion Lab until 2008, where his research produced what the company called "the first practical markerless motion capture system based on off-the-shelf video cameras". The company said its technology had been developed with Stanford, the University of Toronto and the Max Planck Institute, and that it had raised 4 million US dollars from Granite Ventures and Keynote Ventures.[8][9] The company made its trade show debut at SIGGRAPH 2009.[8] Its first product was an online service for customizing character animation, which blended motion data from an online library into custom movements and applied them to existing character rigs.[9][10]
In 2010 GamesBeat reported that Mixamo had 18 employees and a motion capture stage at its San Francisco headquarters, and that it sold individual motions to game developers at an average of 20 to 25 US dollars each.[2]
Growth, 2012-2015
In June 2012 Mixamo made its Auto-Rigger free for models under 10,000 triangles, charging 89.99 US dollars to rig larger characters.[11] By July 2013 the company had 25 employees and, according to TechCrunch, had raised about 11 million US dollars in total. Corazza was by then CEO. TechCrunch listed Microsoft, EA, Sony, Blizzard and Gameloft among its customers and reported an "All Access" plan of 1,500 US dollars per seat per year, covering its characters, the Auto-Rigger and its animation library.[3] AMD invested through AMD Ventures and worked with Mixamo on its Face Plus facial capture software.[12][13]
In May 2014 Corazza told the Voices of VR podcast that Mixamo had more than 200,000 users and a library of about 10,000 animations.[6] The same month the company added a monthly payment option for its yearly subscription.[4]
Acquisition by Adobe
Adobe announced the purchase of Mixamo at the start of June 2015. Fortune reported that the terms were not disclosed and that Mixamo's technology would become part of Photoshop in Adobe's Creative Cloud.[14] Adobe said it wanted users to be able to "create, customize, manipulate, rig and animate 3D content" in Photoshop.[10] Mixamo said it would not accept new paid users for the coming months, let existing subscribers keep full access until 31 December 2015, and stated that content made with it would remain royalty free.[15] Free accounts were extended at the same time to include 10 Auto-Rig downloads and 20 animation downloads, along with unlimited use of Fuse and auto-rigging of Fuse characters.[10]
Adobe later retired several Mixamo tools. The Decimator and Face Plus were discontinued in 2017.[16] In September 2019 Adobe stopped development of Fuse and said it would be removed from Creative Cloud on 13 September 2020. In the same announcement Adobe said the Mixamo.com rigging and animation web service would continue, with dozens of new ready-made characters and a refreshed interface.[17]
Corazza later became a vice president at Adobe and its head of augmented reality, and in 2022 he joined Roblox as head of Roblox Studio.[18]
Products
| Product | Introduced | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animation service | 2009[9] | Online library of motion-captured animations that can be customized and retargeted to a user's character[10] | Available through Mixamo.com[17] |
| Auto-Rigger | By 2012[11] | Web tool that adds a skeleton and skin weights to an uploaded humanoid model[4] | Available through Mixamo.com[5] |
| Face Plus | 28 August 2013[12] | Real-time facial capture with a standard webcam, delivered as a Unity plugin[12] | Discontinued in 2017[16] |
| Fuse | November 2013 (Steam release)[19] | Character creator built from customizable body parts, clothing and textures; version 1.0 let users import their own assets[4] | Development stopped 2019; removed from Creative Cloud 13 September 2020[17] |
| The Decimator | 2014 (early access)[4] | Polygon reduction tool for generating lower levels of detail[4] | Discontinued in 2017[16] |
Auto-Rigger
When CG Channel covered the free tier in 2012, users uploaded a model in FBX, OBJ or BVH format, placed markers on the chin, wrists, elbows and knees, and downloaded a full-body biped rig that could be converted for Autodesk Maya or Autodesk 3ds Max.[11] In 2014 Corazza said the online service added a full skeleton, weight painting and skinning weights in under two minutes.[4] Adobe's documentation says the auto-rigger and the animation library are for bipedal humanoid characters only. It says auto-rigging works best on a character in a default or neutral pose, centred at the world origin, without large extra appendages or props such as wings or tails, and with no gaps between its parts.[5]
Face Plus
Face Plus captured a person's facial expressions through a standard webcam and applied them to a 3D character in real time inside the Unity editor. It relied on the blendshape support in Unity 4.3 and was shown at the Unite 2013 conference with an animated short, Unplugged.[12] AMD provided technical support for the software, which ran on devices supporting OpenCL 1.1 or newer. In AMD's test on an A10-4600M APU, GPU acceleration raised capture from 3 to 42 frames per second.[13]
Fuse
Fuse was released on Steam in November 2013 as a tool for building royalty-free characters for games and animation. It shipped with character assets from Valve, and its models could be taken into game engines, animation software and Valve's Source Filmmaker.[19] In 2014 Corazza said Fuse had more than 200 ways to change body shape, hair and clothing, and that users could import their own body scans, including scans made with a Kinect sensor through partner Body Labs.[6] Fuse 1.0 let developers import their own assets into the character creator.[4]
XR work
Mixamo's products were general 3D animation tools rather than VR products, but the company engaged with the early consumer VR community. Corazza was listed as a speaker at the first SVVR Conference and Expo in May 2014.[20] In his Voices of VR interview that month, he said Mixamo related to virtual reality because it helped people create content, and that High Fidelity had been experimenting with Face Plus for avatar facial animation. He also warned that characters which aim for photorealism but fall short end up in the uncanny valley, and said that for games running on mobile devices photorealism was "not an option".[6]
After the acquisition, Adobe tied Mixamo into its own AR tools. Its help pages for Adobe Aero described Mixamo as a way to add animated 3D characters to an AR scene without 3D animation skills: users chose or uploaded a character on Mixamo.com, picked and adjusted an animation, downloaded it as FBX and imported it into Aero.[7] Adobe announced that Aero would be discontinued on 6 November 2025.[7]
See also
References
- ↑ CGP Staff (2015-06-02). "Adobe acquires Mixamo". CGPress. https://cgpress.org/archives/adobe-acquires-mixamo.html. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Dean Takahashi (2010-08-23). "Mixamo bets video game players will pay money for virtual motion". GamesBeat. https://gamesbeat.com/mixamo-is-banking-that-youll-pay-money-for-virtual-motion/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Kim-Mai Cutler (2013-07-23). "Mixamo Is Building A Platform For Game Developers To Create And Animate 3D Characters". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/mixamo/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 MCV Staff (2014-05-09). "Digging into rigging: Mixamo's character service explored". MCV/DEVELOP. https://www.mcvuk.com/development/digging-into-rigging-mixamos-character-service-explored. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Mixamo - Common questions". Adobe Help Center. Adobe. 2021-09-14. https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/faq/mixamo-faq.html. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Kent Bye (2014-05-29). "Stefano Corazza on creating, auto-rigging & animating 3D characters with Mixamo, avoiding the uncanny valley & facial motion capture with a webcam". Voices of VR Podcast, episode 7. https://voicesofvr.com/?p=129. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Import animated character assets from Mixamo into Aero". Adobe Help Center. Adobe. 2025-08-07. https://helpx.adobe.com/aero/using/import-mixamo-assets.html. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "SIGGRAPH: Mixamo makes show debut". Post Magazine. 2009-08-03. https://www.postmagazine.com/Press-Center/Daily-News/2009/SIGGRAPH-MIXAMO-MAKES-SHOW-DEBUT.aspx. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "3D Pioneers Unveil New Company Mixamo". Animation World Network. 2009-07-27. https://www.awn.com/news/3d-pioneers-unveil-new-company-mixamo. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Jim Thacker (2015-06-02). "Adobe acquires Mixamo". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/?p=70265. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Jim Thacker (2012-06-11). "Mixamo makes Auto-Rigger free for low-poly meshes". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2012/06/mixamo-makes-auto-rigger-free-for-low-poly-meshes. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 "Mixamo Brings 3D Facial Capture and Animation to Indie Developers with Face Plus". Triplepoint press releases. Mixamo. 2013-08-28. https://pressreleases.triplepointpr.com/2013/08/28/mixamo-brings-3d-facial-capture-and-animation-to-indie-developers-with-face-plus/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 "AMD and Mixamo Revolutionize Character Art With World's First Real-Time Facial Capture Technology for the Unity Development Platform". AMD Investor Relations. AMD. 2013-08-28. https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/437/amd-and-mixamo-revolutionize-character-art-with-worlds-first-real-time-facial-capture-technology-for-the-unity-development-platform. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Heather Clancy (2015-06-02). "Adobe buys 3D startup Mixamo". Fortune. https://fortune.com/2015/06/02/adobe-buys-mixamo/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ MCV Staff (2015-06-02). "Adobe acquires Mixamo". MCV/DEVELOP. https://www.mcvuk.com/development/adobe-acquires-mixamo. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Jim Thacker (2019-09-17). "Adobe discontinues Fuse". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2019/09/adobe-discontinues-fuse/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 "An Update on Adobe Fuse as Adobe Moves to the Future of 3D & AR Development". Adobe Blog. Adobe. 2019-09-13. https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2019/09/13/an-update-on-adobe-fuse-as-adobe-moves-to-the-future-of-3d-ar-development. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ "Adobe veteran Stefano Corazza appointed head of Roblox Studio". PocketGamer.biz. 2022-09-07. https://www.pocketgamer.biz/adobe-veteran-stefano-corazza-appointed-head-of-roblox-studio. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 Kris Ligman (2013-11-08). "Fuse adds easy character creation to Steam". Game Developer (Gamasutra). https://gamedeveloper.com/design/-i-fuse-i-adds-easy-character-creation-to-steam. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Paul James (2014-04-28). "The Faces of SVVR Conference & Expo 2014 - New Speakers and Panellists Announced!". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/faces-svvr-conference-expo-confirms-raft-new-speakers-panellists-exhibitors/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.