Theia Interactive Receives Investment from HP Tech Ventures to Improve Unreal Engine Workflows

CHICO, Calif. – September 9, 2020 – Visualization firm and software developer, Theia Interactive, today announced an investment from HP Tech Ventures, earmarked to expand the retail build of its 3D creation tool, Optim. Designed to ease content creation within Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, Optim enables companies to streamline content development across multiple markets, ranging from film, games and all forms of extended reality (XR) to the architecture, aerospace, automotive and heavy manufacturing industries. Recent additions to Optim have also expanded the collaborative tools within Unreal, remotely connecting people in and out of VR.

“With more industries moving toward visualization solutions through photorealistic game engines, it is rapidly becoming a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right,” said Bill Fishkin, president of Theia Interactive. “By adding Optim to existing production pipelines, companies will be able to shave hours, days and weeks off their production times.”

With this investment – made in 2019 – Theia was able to triple the size of its development team and expand Optim’s beta testing program to over 600 professional and amateur users across multiple industries. Ultimately, this led to the final retail build of Optim, which is available now. The team is continuing the development for Optim, introducing a steady stream of new features and updates. The most recent release, Optim 1.2, included a host of new features to further enhance and accelerate the development process, including a new collaborative template that allows users to quickly create multi-user experiences, and tour a digital scene in VR, or meet in a virtual boardroom.

“We chose to invest in Theia because they are tackling a crucial challenge for their customers,” said Angelo Del Priore, partner at HP Tech Ventures. “Theia's experience creating top-quality, high fidelity visualizations includes all forms of XR, and the software necessary to do XR collaboration space."

HP’s collaboration with Theia began at Autodesk University 2018. Since then, HP has continued to nurture small businesses in the VR and AR spaces, both to expand the potential of the mediums and to identify potential partners for its HP Virtual Reality Solutions group.

About Optim
Originally developed as an in-house tool for use by Theia Interactive’s artists and creators, Optim is designed to help users of all levels streamline and simplify Unreal Engine, and improve real-time interaction through collaborative, multi-user templates. Developers can build repeatable rules to optimize, customize and import data more efficiently. Theia has a robust team of in-house software developers to provide innovative solutions to unique challenges. Optim was officially launched in November 2019 and new builds are being introduced on a monthly basis. Free trials are available. 

About Theia Interactive
Based in Chico California, Theia Interactive is a creative solutions studio with a passion for building beautiful virtual environments for business, and offering tools to empower others to do the same. Whether it’s mobile apps, augmented reality demos, or virtual reality experiences, Theia tells engaging stories through virtualization. Theia has created award-winning projects for companies such as Epic Games, Hewlett Packard, Mohawk Group, NVIDIA, Suffolk Construction and Toll Brothers. For more information visit https://theia.io/.