
The PopcornFX tool is designed to facilitate the creation of real-time special effects.
Crédits photos : Persistant Studios
Every year, the Laval Virtual Awards ceremony rewards the best VR / AR projects of the year. In 2024, twelve prizes were given to highlight immersive companies and XR creators. Among the winning projects, there is PopcornFX in the category “Developing & Authoring Tools”, a tool that makes visual effects creation easier using real-time 3D engines. Interview with Maxime Dumas, CEO and CTO of Persistant Studios.
Can you introduce your company?
Persistant Studios is an innovative and pioneering technological company that introduced real-time programmable VFX (ed. note : visual effects) with its solution PopcornFX. It’s a powerful and open special effects platform, which is interoperable with engines like Unreal Engine, Unity and O3DE and with proprietary engines.
Its technology is mostly used in creative industries, especially for demanding AAA video games such as Forza Horizon 5, WWE 2K24 or Diablo II: Resurrected. It meets the highest standards of performance and quality. It can also have applications in virtual and augmented reality, through partnerships for example with Magic Leap as well as industrial professionals.
In addition to these products, the company offers its R&D and VFX production expertise with co-development services in art and engineering dedicated to real-time VFX pipelines.
Can you present the project that received a prize at the Laval Virtual Awards 2024 ?
The current state of VFX and real time simulations in XR game engines has significantly evolved. But it’s often limited by the rigid functionalities of integrated particles and physics engines which lack flexibility when it comes to specific applications.
These engines are often augmented with external plugins that are non-interoperable and compatible with a limited number of devices and graphic APIs, making them difficult to adapt to very specific needs. Besides, the personalization of those solutions needs changes inside the engine which limits long-term maintainability and restricts those adaptations only to graphic engineering experts.
The PopcornFX project’s goal is to solve those problems with an alternative solution that encapsulates simulation directly in assets. These assets are specifically compiled for each platform (API and devices), which guarantees optimized performances, interoperability and portability. This approach is a way to simplify the adaptation to various technical environments, opening a path towards a more flexible and accessible use especially for researchers and creators.
What was your motivation when applying for the Laval Virtual Awards?
Our application for Laval Virtual Awards was motivated by our desire to promote our project to the eyes of the European and international XR community. The Laval Virtual exhibition is recognized for highlighting innovation in the field of virtual and augmented reality. So it was a unique opportunity to measure our solution against the best current initiatives, to get constructive feedback and to increase our visibility to potential partners and customers beyond our core business sectors.
How did you experience your first participation in Europe’s biggest XR event?
Our first participation as a nominee at Laval Virtual enabled us to meet other creators and to exchange on the latest uses and progress. It reinforced our motivation to move our project forward.
What were the benefits of this award given by a jury of international experts?
Receiving this award has given us additional visibility and piqued the interest of potential new partners.
The Awards ceremony’s theme was “magic”. If you could wave your magic wand and create the VR solution of your dreams, what would it be?
This would represent the continuation of the current project in its fully realized form, integrating new Vulkan-, Metal- and ISPC-compatible GPU backends, an interoperable asset marketplace, and a library of ready-to-use solvers and systems to enable designers to simulate little-explored dynamic phenomena: thin films, liquids, smoke transport, procedural vegetation, crowd dynamics, tissue and soft-body simulation…
This solution would also include procedural audio rendering capabilities and a simplify edition and manipulation mode in VR, offering a complete interoperability and a parity of functionality with each engine, device and virtual world.
By adopting open standards like USD, this solution aims to move beyond the closed environments to create an interconnected, hybrid ecosystem. Transversal by nature, it would meet the needs of multiple sectors, from entertainment and training to education, industry and healthcare.
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The success of the PopcornFX project could be yours! Would you also like to win an Award? The applications for the Laval Virtual Awards 2025 are open until January 25. To send your project, visit the online platform now.