Vicon, the motion capture division of Oxford Metrics, has acquired Manchester-based Captive Devices Ltd, a maker of head-mounted camera systems for markerless facial performance capture, with the founding team joining Vicon with immediate effect. The deal brings facial and body capture technology under one roof for the first time in the industry, addressing a long-standing gap in which studios have had to source the two capabilities from separate vendors with separate pipelines. Vicon says its core marker-based optical motion capture business, built up over more than 40 years, is unaffected, with the new technology offered as an addition to existing systems rather than a replacement.

Captive Devices' clients already include Ninja Theory, Nant Studios, Animatrik and Deep Silver Dambuster Studios, and its CoreHMC system integrates directly with Epic Games' Unreal Engine, allowing real-time capture and review on set. Oxford Metrics chief executive Imogen O'Connor called the acquisition a natural cultural and technological fit, while Captive Devices co-founder Fred Isaac said joining Vicon would give the smaller firm access to greater manufacturing scale, sales distribution and global support. Vicon, founded in 1984, counts Dreamworks, ByteDance, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Sony, Ubisoft and Warner Bros among its customers, while parent company Oxford Metrics serves thousands of clients in more than 70 countries.