Tafi 3D and CGHero Set to Bring Next Level Realism to Open-Source Game Engine

SALT LAKE CITY, July 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tafi Co, a leader in 3D digital art, custom avatar and character creation and emoji systems, announced a partnership with CGHero to create original hyper-realistic avatar assets for the open-source game engine O3DE. As an open-source project, O3DE is a collaborative effort creating a 3D engine for building games, renders and more and will be openly governed by its community as a whole.

Future users of O3DE will have direct access to Tafi's world-class character system, which will include these professional, AAA-quality avatar assets being created by CGHero. Work has begun on several human characters, featuring hyper-realistic detail and graphics. Like all Tafi avatar systems, these lifelike models will be customizable, with adjustments like changeable hair, clothes, facial expressions, and more. The goal for Tafi's SDK is to empower developers and users to leverage a persistent digital identity/avatar across the rapidly developing meta-verse. By pairing that with a high-fidelity, high-quality open source engine such as O3DE, developers have more access to our avatar assets than ever before.

"We have been working with the team for a little while now and it has been an absolute delight. They have provided extensive workflows and tools to help us to ensure we are able to integrate the characters into their software. With this new collaboration, we aim to offer more of our Heroes (artists) more exciting work opportunities and experience. The CGHero Team are looking forward to building a long-term relationship with the Tafi Team," said Chris Lawrence of CGHero.

"We were incredibly excited to be part of the founding of O3DE. As we approached O3DE as an environment, and worked with collaborators and partners, we really wanted to create the foundation for a realistic, AAA avatar/character. For these characters, we chose to leverage our talented internal team, and combine that with CGHero's veteran team of AAA game content creators. The work that CGHero does speaks for itself!" said Ty Duperron of Tafi. "Like Tafi they believe in empowering creators and helping facilitate so that exceptional digital artists can focus on what they love. CGHero's network of 'heroes' combined with their production teams allows for the utmost quality. We are pumped by the O3DE announcement and to share our pilot avatars with the world."

In April of this year, Tafi joined the ranks of O3DE's founding members, which includes Adobe, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backtrace,io, Carbonated, Futurewei, GAMEPOCH, Genvid Technologies, Hadean, HERE Technologies, Huawei, International Game Developers Association, Kythera AI, Niantic, Open Robotics, PopcornFX, Rochester Institute of Technology, TLM Partners, and Wargaming.

"The partnership between Tafi and CGHero to bring realistic avatars and character creation to O3DE allows developers to take advantage of the engine's new rendering capabilities to provide lifelike representations of characters. This gives players more agency in how they experience a game world," said Amar Mehta, General Manager of Amazon Lumberyard.

AWS has contributed their Amazon Lumberyard AAA gaming engine to the O3DE project, establishing the foundation for the entire O3DE engine. The O3DE project is part of the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open-sources. Contributors and developers of O3DE benefit from neutral open-source collaboration across multiple industries.

About CGHero
CGHero is a collaborative marketplace for CGI content creation. Their platform supports many of the best "Heroes" or 3D artists and creators in the industry, and offers a flexible solution for anyone with 3D or CGI, no matter the size or scale of the project. CGHero brings the skill and polish of Hollywood to the everyday creator. With specialties in over 60 CGI-related tasks, CGHero is sure to have an artist who can meet the demands of any project. Collaboration is made easy with their simple application process, which enables them to pair you with the perfect artist.

To learn more about CGHero visit https://cghero.com/

About Tafi 3D
Founded in 2019, Tafi's mission is to make personalized avatars and branded digital content available to anyone and everyone who wants to level-up their digital personality. Tafi empowers creators by offering a powerful and dynamic SDK that includes everything a developer would need to get custom characters and avatars running in their own project. The system is portable across platforms including mobile, gaming, XR, social media, messaging and video communications. Tafi's investors include Benchmark Capital, Columbia Capital, and Ponte Partners.

To learn more about Tafi 3D visit https://maketafi.com/ 

CONTACT
Kasey Thomas
[email protected]

SOURCE Tafi

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