AI Character in Games: Didimo's Journey with Veronica Orvalho | 343

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of Game Dev unchain the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof I am your host Brandon fam and with me a special guest Veronica Oro there we go there we go nice here all right uh so Verona this is the part of the podcast where I ask our guest which is yourself to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers out there of where you've been where you're at where are you heading okay so first thank you so much I'm delighted to be here today so my name is Veronica I'm the founder of DDO I'm currently speaking to you all from PTO in Portugal in a tiny fisherman town where we make some magic and develop some awesome technology for

um gaming so yeah that's where we are today perfect uh speaking of which why don't you kind of talk more about didimo so we're in the age of I think the last couple years there's like this huge influence progression with AI tools or primarily tools that make game development easier and faster right um we're always been on that path did it most sounds like it's along that way but progressing it even further than ever before uh do you mind talking about what is Dido and what are the specific problems you guys are trying to solve in the game industry yeah absolutely so we'll probably chat about a little bit about myself but um it's a longlasting problem what I detected about two decades ago while I was doing my PhD on computer graphics and that big problem was how can we create automatically digital characters in a manner that will

retain the art style and the specifications defined by the artists and still you know automate that tedious process that is you know creating ton of characters at scale so we pretty much solved that problem we can automatically build a End to endend production pipeline where we can have artists defined the art style they want from their game for their characters to be in a game how want how do they want the mesh the rig to be and we you input that into our software uh and we can automatically output unlimited variations of uh digital characters with unlimited number of assets um and ingest them directly into the game engine so so yeah um we pretty much I think I I

believe we created a full production pipeline to solve character creation at scale so game studios don't need to reinvent the wheel over and over on building a character editor so yeah we can deep dive you can ask me tons of questions and I and I'll walk you through every single thing we developed so where are the um what what are the primary games type of Studios that are kind of using Dio or at least uh initially interested uh in this technology so we we like about two years ago um we started testing the idea and talking to um game you know RPG type of games MMOs um simulators to understand if they actually wanted to use uh third party you know full engine to be part of such a critical process within a game which is you know pretty much the character

Pipeline and we got you know very good feedback because usually games you know getting this into this crunch mode and they would say that if we can give them a tool where they can still control the art style and the specifications of their cars so pretty much there was no friction to to integrate within their current car pipeline they will for sure use it and so we had a city skyline with colossal order being like the first game Studio video that said yeah we need that um can we do it and in less than two month we build the whole initial version of the product based on all the IP and all the tech that we have developed in the past so so yeah so primarily I would say simulators RPGs MMOs any any game you know strategy games or even uh first person shooters any game that requires a lot of characters uh and a lot of variations so what we really wanted to

bring was the ability of people to see a game where the the the content is diverse so you don't have the same 10 20 50 characters that the only thing that you're doing is just changing a little bit you know the skin color on a few of the garments so we literally can build unlimited of unique characters to populate um any type of game um so yeah any game that requires lot of character variation would be a Target so I'm a little bit interested in the uh Inception of DMO right if we go back in time a bit so you came up with a thesis an idea for a business right how did you go from a single idea to growing a team to eventually uh having like a major deal uh with with a game company uh to really get things going and it sounds like you know the the the the progress that

you've made in a short amount of time is really impressive if you don't mind diving into that kind of like background of the the company yeah yeah absolutely um I would just say two words uh greit and passion yeah so without those two things you'd never get into this very you know crazy idea of first building a company second trying to solve a long lasting problem um that you know many many studios every year they build character editors right so why would someone want to like generate you know an automatic pipeline to solve it so so the the Genesis actually um starts um like two decades ago when I was uh doing my PhD and I spent about a year and a half talking to game studios um and asking them what problem s were difficult to do hard to

solve and um they they mentioned the character creation was was one of those big problems so I then went back and said okay what was difficult about building characters and I couldn't find a direct answer they say you know everything is difficult and by everything is you know from modeling the 3D character to setting up the textures to setting up the rig defining an animation system and and let's remember that two decades ago you know we don't have the technology that we have today or not even the computational power that we have today so but one thing was um the key the biggest learning and that was that no when you want to automate a system you want to automate almost everything except the creative aspect that makes a game athetics unique so what I learned you know those two two decades ago was the art need to maintain the full

control of how they want those characters to look like and they also want to own and have full control of how they want the specifications of those characters to be so two decades later when we build Dido that still resonated to me and I said okay we're going to build a software where we're going to allow the game studios to continue having full control of how they want those characters to be and we're just going to automate the most tedious pieces and we're going to allow them to build unique characters based on their specifications so that was a bit of the the Genesis is and and that cap you know faithful to today and I think that's what makes the software when we talk to companies that resonates with them and and they want to use it because they they can still own the key element which is how the characters are going to look at the end of the day um um so so yeah I

think that's that's where we nail it down and that's why we go so fast adoption um once we started presenting the idea of what we wanted to build yeah I mean character development has always been it's an interesting discipline because they're very so much I come from environment and so we're kind of like the opposite in terms of we get like a small size on the disc or in this case just on hard drive and they have like twice as much right and you know the world is usually bigger than characters however characters have like infinite what we feel infinite time to kind of really tailor it perfectly because it's so close to the camera that in weapons so like it's always been like a challenge how how much time they have how much work they have and usually those teams are are small way smaller the environment team so it's interesting kind of see like the evolution of like how character Pipelines have finally

started to change I feel like in the last 3 four years it's always been one artist in a room for x amount of months and then you know just really linear pathway of of of kind of creating things um I do want to kind of dig into staying true to your original idea of fixing this issue like was it like a a did you were you able to kind of organize a team uh was it bootst trap or was there some kind of R&D funding from the government like how did you get the the amount that you needed to kind of really kind of test your thesis and and and build a product essentially oh that that's an excellent question it was really difficult in the sense that I all I mean i' I've done my master's degrees in video games I've been playing games since I am extremely little I programmed my own games when I was young so I always want to do video games and when I got the opportunity to build DDO which

was in 2016 I suddenly you know got kind of like bombarded and said oh the technology you're building can go above and beyond gaming so you should look into all other Industries so we were still uh building the technology because I had a research lab for 10 years and so we transfer the knowhow to the company and we were building the tech and we work with companies like the Amazon and Sony to build the tech and we were focusing in different Industries it wasn't just gaming and then um in 20 end of 2020 two I make this bold decision which is gosh I'm just going to go back to what I know best which is gaming the gaming industry is humongous is bigger than film and music all together so let's just focus on on on the industry I know it has a huge problem still today and let's just build it so so we Clos

down all the other verticals well not we close them we kind of like put them on hold and I refocus the whole team just to build up this product which is populate and I said we're just going to nail down we're going to build a a software that can create infinite characters with the needs of the game industry and we got with colossal order and with them we understood exactly how they wanted the problem to be solved and in two month we just built the first prototype in order to get there we managed to do it because I already had a team of about 25 people extremely experts in computer vision computer Graphics uh coming from the gaming industry so like Top Notch you know team and that have been building all the technology that we have today um where we own every single line of code we build our own data sets we bought some models that we needed so we also

invested a lot in making sure that we own every single piece of code so because I knew that when we would go work with big game studios that was one of the first thing that were going to ask right is H can we use your code freely in the sense that they're not external dependencies are we okay of using your data sets and because maybe they didn't want to people to scrap the internet so so we make sure that we had all the key ingredients and for that um we could not do it with just boost dropping so we did had a total as of today we raised a total of 17 million um Euros um and we had a part of it comes from European grants as well about two million from European grants so we were we're very well funded and we're a deep tech company and because of that funding we have enough room to innovate and build you know R&D and then convert it into a product um after validating which were the

market needs so pretty much I guess I would say it took us roughly five five six years to build or the core fun fundamental Tech and then a year less than a year to build and launch the tech with a game in the market which is huge right huge yeah yes yeah but success doesn't come from one day to the other it's tons of years of research and um being you know having a lot of great on understanding that that idea I had two decades ago was still a problem today and it was worth solving it so well it's definitely a problem uh that Studios will always have uh just by the basis that you know your product was immediately received by by Studios as soon as it was ready

for for for for uh consumption right so I I would love to kind of so like there's there's this mystery for most game developers most startup Founders most people that are looking to kind of create their own IP like from that uh angle the funding stage is still a big mystery for at least those who haven't been you know a part of that process so H just to kind of as a basis understanding like what was that initial step of all right we're going to go ask for funding to finally when paycheck and the bank were ready to like how long was that process uh and what was the challenges of that process that you guys have to go back to the table to readjust your pitch essentially it's still a mystery for me so uh I'm just trying to see how can I back that very important and complex

question that you ask I I I think I'm really fortunate like my mom used to say I have this really shiny star that follows me and I am just honestly try to be always very true to true to my values and and try to stay focused on what I believe can take you to Greatness and then and then be actionable like have the actions right so you have your values you have a focus and then you take action in what you say you want to do I think that's the first thing so back in so okay we had 10 years of research funding from the EU to my lab so during 10 years you know we've been developing tech tech tech and innovating in the different areas of the character creation pipeline so a character creation pipeline I'm very sure everyone listening the channel knows but pretty

much you got to automate how you build the 3D model how you create the rig how you create all the textures for that 3D model how you build a complete animation retargeting system how can you plug in motion capture into the characters how can you then build all the shading and rendering system to to animate on screen so so that's a lot right it's just automating all that is is very complex so the initial funding came from the e into my research lab and in end of 2015 uh I decided I I just either wanted to reduce my research lab or focus on other areas because I was just being a bit tired of doing a lot of innovation and then the Innovation would stay at the University would never make it into the industry so I was a bit frustrated and I presented at an event and then suddenly the someone from the Portuguese government and say hey Veronica an

investors an investor is asking to invest in in very early early stage technology can I give you uh your contact and I was like sure so I got a contact from an investor and he said that he wanted to invest in what I was developing and I said this is a research lab this is just tech there like no no no no business plan no business nothing right and and and he said there's something very important what you have I'm sure you're going to this is really worth doing so in um less than three weeks I said okay there's one place we got to go test this idea and I said it's the game developers conference and um I I suggested to to look for a meeting and back then I I um I look for this meeting which was with uh Amazon so it took me um probably three weeks to get a meeting

with the general manager of back then Amazon Lumberyard so that was in January 2016 and I think this is really important for those listening because in January 2016 uh Amazon had just acquired the cry engine a license for the cry engine and they were building lambard at the same time you had unity and unreal right so but if I wanted to validate in in a very short period of time if what I had was valuable it would have taken me too long to reach out to anyone at un and unreal so I thought okay let's reach out to someone at Amazon so it took me about five contacts like reaching out to five different people and and then I got the meeting with the right person at Amazon I flew to San Francisco just for that meeting and I got this amazing meeting with the team at Amazon that you know said that what I showed them about automatic character creation was probably the best thing and show that they've seen and so we created a plugin

for them simultaneously same trip like two days in um they my first investor said hey Veronica well how about are we ready to invest and I was like no I don't know I don't know if we have a business model for this and he suggested we apply to Tex Stars which is an accelerator program kind of like white combinator like you know why Comin textiles for me are kind of like the the best you know accelerators out there so we wrote that night really early which is wrote the whole application and long story short um we passed every single uh interview with texter and before I realized I was living in London for four month um a text for to apply to to attend Texar in London which build me in in a very concentrated way gave me everything uh to get started onto how you build a business so so I'm you know

kind of like eternally grateful because between texter and the first investor we actually launched DDO I don't think you think too much or I didn't at least of all the challenges and problems and complications that you might you might have I was just all in because I wanted to solve this very difficult problem that was on my mind for you know back then like about 15 years already or 10 years or 12 years I don't know um I just wanted to solve it and show the world that it was meaningful um so that's how we actually got started and the rest it got harder and harder but I'm happy to Deep dive on it but um yeah it's um really fortunate on how I got started really um that that period during Tex chart that incubator program in London so I'm assuming there's you're around other Founders like how big was that group your group uh during those four months and if you

don't mind kind of like sharing what the biggest takeaways from from those four months that really helped kind of push or organize you your thoughts into a business plan or whatever yeah absolutely I mean it was fundamental it's um the managing director was Max and oh my God is nicest person like they're all in for the well-being of the founders and for giving you kind of like a customized program for what you need in order to build your business because every business is different so I think it was between probably around 1,500 applications and they selected 11 companies um in my case I feel really fortunate because they usually accept companies with a team and I was a solo founder so I had a team at the University but I needed to create a different team in order to build a

company so they gave me like lots of um knowhow in terms of okay how do you pit your business how you build a financial model what is sales marketing everything that is non Tech because I am very Tech um focus so everything that was related with tech I I had no problems um and then the most important thing is they do something that called The MENTOR Madness so in two weeks you meet a hundred mentors and these these are like super top top people mostly from the UK ecosystem in this case um where you meet investors VPS of senior companies like coming from Disney or NBC or BBC I mean whoever you need it and then the biggest asset is that they have a huge Network so if you say look I I need to do some market research within you know the game industry and they will immediately put you in contact with the right person that can assist you in order to do that

or I need to understand how should I build pricing they will again put you in contact and the beauty is that now 80 years after we've done the texter the accelerator program they also reinvested the second time when we did our series a and there one phone call away so it's it's just magical uh anything you need suddenly you have a huge network of extremely experienced people on any topic that you can think of that can assist you at any point in time either for the good for the bad for for anything right so because I mean building a company can be extremely emotionally heavy so you need to be with people that either have went through the same thing or people that can help you go through those hard moments usually hard moments are always related with people so it's it's really good to to get that emotional support uh all the time I mean there in many cases they've

been present still today so many years later so yeah I I couldn't have done it without them the other thing is you have to be all in to build a company and you have to be all in Plus+ if you're going to do Tech Stars because that means you arrive at 730 a.m. and you're still at the accelerator or working on your business at me midnight for me it meant I had I I have two kids so meant moving with my whole family to London getting a babysitter you know from 700 a.m. to midnight or 1:00 a.m. uh to make sure that I could be fully focused so it's a very important personal and family decision you need to have a lot of support from your like Inner Circle um to be able to make it through successfully you you cannot do it alone

really yeah I think that's a super important aspect um for sure I think I I kind of Envy because I started my company a lot later in life with a family um versus when I see people single ready to go no kids I feel the same I do feel the same yeah because there's so much you got to make up for uh to to kind of compete right to be uh even if it's a friendly competition you can't help but compare right in terms of just time and resource so uh like that that ability to kind of you know go from your house focusing on the business and then free from the distractions even though it's good distractions however it's at times feels like you have to kind of duplicate yourself uh to kind of maintain the the sanity of it all so uh I I think what

that's one of the things I I kind of want to uh transition to because there's a lot of um in game development especially for people who uh start their own Studio but after many years of service right in in the company uh that they've been at like mostly AAA right there is a definite value towards like High Caliber Canon for funding uh their their project their passion project but there's a really low percentage that that actually makes it successful right so there's a high percentage of a lot of veterans that do this later in their life but like you said I don't quite feel that at they they have the the grit and the Allin because you know standing out on on your own versus having that security of a

bigger company yeah and with the family aspect and the you know being used to a high salary with no risks right stable income that the challenges of finding a company later in life is is so difficult because you're constantly being pulled as like why am I doing this like I have it so much easier uh and and I think unfortunately that contributes to a lot of potentially great Concepts not really uh making it all the way through um and I'm sure you kind of see this uh I would love to kind of hear your opinion if you're you're kind of seeing that knowing that you went through kind of hellish uh uh personal experience just managing everything finding a company uh and then seeing like what you see in the game development where routinely we're seeing Studio Founders kind of dissolving 2 years later I mean I I would like to kind of as an example

devolver digital right um that's a famous one that recently closed they had full funding from the start from PlayStation two years in before any or is it is it devolver deviant I think it's deviant one of those um I'll forget the name it starts with a d it's they have full funding from Sony two years later before even announcing their Studio closed down and they were like a 100 plus people right uh I would love to kind of hear your thoughts and opinions on on that just based on your experience as well yeah yeah I think there are a couple of things also to unpack here so first one is you know and I go back I know I've said it a couple of times already in in in in the call but you got to have gr and passion and and really wants to want to do it and really believe that what you're doing is different it's Unique and there's a target audience that will consume it and in our case we solve a

problem if you're if you're building a game it's a bit different right but in our case we got to solve a a real problem so once you have that and you nailed it you can just feel the momentum so that gives you the spike to continue and taking it from the next stage so I think it's really important to you know to have that Clear Vision and break it down into different kind of like imagine like climbing you know a mountain um kimaro which by the way I'm climbing in June we can chat about it if you want so you just break it down in different camps and because they are going to keep you sane and they're gonna you're going to see Milestones small achievements happening okay so so on one side is just just keeping you sane the other thing that not many people talk about is to always in be financially responsible so you say they hire a 100 people and then they have to shut down the studio so for the eight years we've been having Dio we

never had to do and I touching wood everywhere like we never had to do not even one layoff yeah um even during the covid period so um I think it's really important to to be extremely financially responsible and in our case we have financial plan A B C D E FG whichever you can think of depending on how what's happening in the market what's happening with our you know own approach what's happening with customers what's happening you know with with hiring so I think you know being financially responsible is really really important and be constantly modeling it out in terms of okay am I getting to my next Milestone if I don't get to the next Milestone what do I need to change in order to continue being financially um uh responsible moving forward and always making sure that you have money in the bank so I I I think is is is that combination right is the passion the

greet the taking you know breaking down those Milestones or having a very clear you know top of the summit breaking down in milestones and then being financially responsible you know that you get to those milestones in a healthy way you financially healthy way um yeah that's how we try to do it was this based on instincts how how how were you able to kind of arrive these because you're saying you're you know this is your first time but it sounds like you've had many years of experience was it through the acceler program just being around the network of people just sharing their experiences because a lot of Us game developers usually learn through failure first okay yeah I I I think I would even though I'm a professor at the University I do consider myself s like a lifelong learner and I I feel I'm always the most ignorant person in the room so that feeling of being ignorant uh ask takes

me to ask questions all the time and from the get-go I think I have a really good Advisory Board and and I try to find people that can complement my knowledge and I'm all the time asking would you do this better how would you do this how would you do that so I'm all the time very curious and asking others that have done it others that have failed you know on their experience and then yeah I guess it's a lot about God feeling and Instinct but the way I Define that feeling or instinct is being aware of your um surroundings and what I mean about that is um being able to read uh data right all around you and then being paying attention and then suddenly you start making the right connections between those this what it looks to be disconnected moments and so then you can make a decision and your our brain is

full of these disconnected elements that then we can actually start making sense out of them and that's what Instinct and gut feeling end UPS being um I I do have again I Rely a lot on our Advisory board and the people that I meet and um I'm very fortunate to have won many awards and some of those Awards means being part of different ecosystems like Tech Stars I got the winning Women program with ey I got you know I did the Google for entrepreneurs like you know in San Francisco and all these networks H you learn right and you listen you listen to how others have done it and then you just try to make the best decisions um and then you learn from your thousands of mistakes uh that that that they happen every day um the other thing that helped me a lot is from very early on um

I got the advice that says Veronica is building a company and you're a solo founder is so such an alone thing and you cannot do it alone so um I got a business coach um and and that I had two one first in my first in the first period of time and now I have another one um and uh they keep you they keep you how do you say um uh in check and they also keep you mentally healthy and they make you the tough questions to try to build in you know in a better self in in a better leader and and you start gaining more confidence and and slowly um hopefully you you start making better decisions um and and then keeping a very open Channel with with all the team I I think I mean that that was that's still my way um um

it works for me but um it might be different from someone else yeah so well I I would speak let me speak on behalf of like most game developers I myself I I think a lot of game developers that you come across are are either self-taught or went to like a trade school art school all right and very few uh have gone through the the University track right a full Master's track but every time I do meet people like yourself you guys seem so much more prepared for all facets of uh game development right not just working in there but you know to manager roles to Studio Founders I I I do see like a small percentage that uh takes the traditional route of Education uh are are I can't think of any other way but

actually had practice uh in in in in under the school uh guidelines to kind of be more prepared for things that most game developers aren't like I think the the most common thing with game developers that you find is like most who are kind of promoting and manager role are not good managers uh because they're used to the crafting and this kind of leads into my next question but the people managing has always been and will be a challenge uh from working at another company to finding your own company right and uh it's never the the really the product or the original idea it's just constantly the variables are the people right AB so I would love to kind of dig into that you don't have to name names but like kind of kind of lay out like the challenges of the beginning now or you know future of like just people

and you mentioned about being surrounded by the right ones to kind of achieve your goals uh what process did you go through to to to reach that conclusion yeah I uh I tend to be good at finding nice human beings and um I think i' I've shared this already with so many people that I don't mind sharing it with it I don't know how many thousands of people would be here anyways hope it help bys so about maybe probably 10 years ago um I decided to cut off all the toxic people in my life absolutely all of them not going to explain why it's a very personal thing but what happened next is what's interesting so decided to stop talking to every single person that was toxic some relations Is I I sto them better than others until a really good friend of mine say Hey Ron gu they're not calling you back just don't worry about it they probably didn't care about you

anyways because I was very concerned about not letting know those people that wasn't going to be talking to them any longer um so then I went from an extremely high social life to no social life whatsoever because you're alone I mean suddenly like your circle becomes like very very very tiny okay um but then some magic happens the very few people that you start getting to know they're just nice because you don't want to be with toxic people any longer right so you're with nice people and it's very basic nice people just brings you nice people and so suddenly your environment becomes very healthy and um it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and now 10 years later I am I just love the people I am with and you become better at not letting people that do not Feit your values close to you that doesn't mean that you don't talk to them you just talk to whoever you want but you just you just

understand where you're putting the limits and um and and and that became my way of being and coupled with a lot of personal work you know with the different coaches that I had to understand which are my core values and which which are different from everyone but then when we do the hiring or I bring someone to the team the only thing I look in the interview is do they have this core value which in my case is authentic authenticity authenticity and caring for others I I do look for those if they do then I know that they can join my team they will bring other unique values that they have uh but I I I know that it will be um a good place because everyone within in this case Dio at least will share one or two core values and then they bring their uniqueness and that's

what makes it you know such so interesting having um having teams um I'm I'm sharing the good part right of course I make mistakes of course you know not every person that you bring in end up being a culture fit for many reasons but in the most cases it does uh and then the team itself self protects if someone comes that doesn't really fit then it automatically self protects from that so it took many many years to build this kind of like machine right of of having you know good people working with good people and and good can mean different things in different organizations so you just need to be able to discover which ones are the ones for you because at the end of the day if you're leading a team um it's your value values that are Amplified um at your

surrounding and and it took me many years to to figure that out um even when I had my research lab I struggled a lot for you know a decade that I had a research lab um I struggled a lot um and I guess those 10 years taught me how I could do things differently when I built DDO so you know was 10 years of learning plus the fact that I've been teaching for two decades so being in a classroom teaching and and being faced with over 150 students every year you that that also you know kind of gives you tools and techniques that you you gota develop them for survival if in the worst scenario right so um yeah um I guess in summary is Having the courage to figure out who you are which are your values and how you can find those values in the people that you want to you want

that joins your team and how you make them shine at the end of the day how can you make the people around you uh be better and find their own path even after they leave Dida right one of the the questions I love asking um that I learned from the former uh head of HR um uh at LinkedIn he said something that I thought it was brilliant when you do an interview you ask the person um what do they want to do after they leave your company because if you care about what they want to do after they leave your company that means that you want to build a longlasting relationship no matter what they do when when they're with you and I thought that that was brilliant and it fitted perfectly the way I wanted to to lead Dido so yeah I guess um yeah people it's it's challenging but it's a beauty when you find the right one the right ones that that is actually a very

uh great way to ask that question because the the traditional way of asking that question is like oh what's your fiveyear plan in the company right and it's never honest it's like I'm not going to be here why why does it matter are you going to be here you know that's usually how I throw it back but to ask what you going to do after it it makes it very honest about you know we're a part of your uh your your your progression right let us be a part of your journey instead of dominating your journey it's like hey I you know uh but that that's a fantastic thing I'm probably going to steal from now on um thanks for sharing that I mean I'm kind of personally going through that s similar journey of like realizing last year uh about the toxic people in my life um and and and in that editing process right now uh because the the crazy thing is it it it doesn't happen

uh automatically I mean it really unfortunately happens after a crisis and you kind of look around and you're like who's actually calling me and checking up on me and and I was actually very surprised uh as recently as last year to find these people I haven't talked to for 5 10 years or somehow found my number heard the news through the grape vine and reached out while in my case you know uh maybe shockingly not shockingly a lot of it was just family right uh that that kind of takes things for granted in my opinion because it's kind of nihilistic or sad to kind of say it this way but someone kind of mentioned to me while I was going through that period like you know family can be great but also can be friends that you didn't choose right and I was very shocked about realizing that um and probably

that's when everybody realizes around that age right yeah so um but yeah starting that process and starting to put more uh resource into the relationship that seemed to be genuinely about supporting and making you better uh I'm start I'm feeling the positivity uh as kind of like a a strong Foundation to get to the next stage where I want to be right so it's it's just interesting kind of hearing that from you sharing that uh that I think a lot of people are kind of going in a very similar Journey uh could be part of the corter life crises is it seems like everyone kind of hits that point where um it's very interesting yeah but like uh yeah the people part the people aspect I think is the largest piece of the pie when it comes to creating a a common goal a

company uh to see it through and um I I would love to kind of talk more about you know the next stage so going back to um how you were able to kind of talk to Amazon uh realizing you know out of the big three lumber yard is in its infancy right and uh was more willing more open to Innovations right um that is some great intuity uh to to kind of see that and then did you feel things accelerated after that first deal it got easier because you have a major brand using your product well I guess there always different things at different moment right and you got to find and pick the bottle and then as one of another angel in investor said to me Veronica when they first invested on our seat round

they said Veronica you're brilliant you you know what you're doing you have ton of potentials but never underestimate that having luck is also important so you look for your you look for your luck you got to be aware and pay attention so I'm going to tell another story so we got Amazon a year after I was invited to be at the booth of Amazon at GDC and that was huge right so they invited us there as partners and on one of this so I went alone because I didn't have any money really so imagine alone building a company you have to be crazy have no have ton of courage and no fear okay at this point you're like I have no fear I I know it's going to work somehow it's going to work if you're an if you're building a company you gotta feel every single day that it is going to work so you got to be optimistic and no

fear all the time so at least that's how I am so I was at the booth of Amazon and I cannot remember if it was Wednesday Exposition day it was already like imagine 5 to 6 you're like exhausted of being there for three days already and at 5 to 6 uh two people com in to the booth and they ask me my name and and they say what are are you doing or what do you do I was so tired so tired and I was like look I'm not going to tell you what I do I'm just going to tell you why I do it and I said in five years everyone is everyone is going to have our Tech in the mobile devices so back then we were just doing uh 3D character reconstruction okay so I said everyone is going to have a digital human on their mobile devices and for my luck they turn around their badge they said I'm the head of Sony mobile and it's not

going to be in five years it's going to be in three years or less I want you guys to talk to us and I was like oh my God and so they like send me the NDA next thing in less than six month we were embedding our technology in the Sony mobile Experia mobile phones so I guess you know it's this combination of one good thing that will bring another good thing and another good thing is going to bring another good thing so we embed it into the Sony mobile phone so then we have the Sony logo right on on our on our badge and this brings you know credibility you work really hard to get that contract and one good contract and choosing carefully who you want to do partnership with you know takes you to the next one and the next one so choosing those Partners or getting chosen by means you you you become you put your exposure in the right places so it's all about making the best choices you can every single day so so yeah so

I we were fortunate and then then the year after Sony invited us to be at their booth and you know slowly you keep on building your business then we had a moment that we were exploring the different um Industries until I said this is not working so that's when you know we got into end of 2022 beginning of 2023 and decid to go back just to gaming so um it's just about making choices understanding if it is the right choice if it's not if it's not the right choice to have the courage to stop it really fast um and and and learning to say no to opportunities that you might need at the moment but they can harm you in the long run so I had a bunch of those because I study a lot of the stoic philosoph ophy and the sto says that when you actually say no to something

you're actually saying yes to the right things so that that you know it's something that I drive myself through quite a lot to understand if I am making every day the right choices um and and and some of them I drag them too long and I knew I was dragging them too long because sometimes you just don't have the courage to make the right decision even though you know which one it is so so um it's looking back and understanding you know a couple of things then is being aware of the opportunities looking for those opportunities to happen and then assessing if it it is the right on if you can say yes or if you can say no and and then move forward and making decisions faster and faster and faster every time you know um you're hitting your NE next Milestone so yeah oh uh Veronica that's super enlightening to talk to you uh

about Dio about your success thus far uh the challenges uh I think the listeners are are there's so much from this last hour that I think uh it's going to help them along with their game development Journey uh that does Mark that you made it through the hour I want to thank you personally hopefully it was fruitful as fruitful for you as for me uh and uh this is actually the part where I uh shut up and hand the mic over to you uh to talk to the people uh directly about you know where they can find uh dudo uh you know how they can start incorporating into their Pipeline and everything about it oh thank you so well you guys know my name I'm Veronica you can find us on I guess the easiest way will be on our website which is www.dd mo. or you can look for me on

LinkedIn if you type Veronica or valo o r v a l h o I'm sure you'll find a ton of Articles as well and um yeah we are delighted to learn from either AAA ablea games uh that want to um automate or include a full end to-end production Pipeline and simultaneously I love to here for more Indie developers because hopefully you know once we nail down all the needs for you know triaa games we can make a version that goes fully automatic for more Indie developers you know web 3 mobile that's kind of like our Dream longterm so love to get in touch with those that are on that space and also those that wants to explore user generated content because I truly believe that at the end of the day um ERS are the ones that are going to be the source for that content in the

future and US developers we just need to make it easier or easy for them to upload that content and make it unique in in each game um we're all building so I'll love it here you can keep in touch love to hear what you thought about video and the interview of course well thank you Veronica as always you guys can find find all the links in in the description below uh other than that see you guys all next week [Music] [Music]