Kira

Kira is a sci-fi thriller about water, power, and an AI nobody can quite trust. In a near-future where one corporation controls the planet’s most precious resource, two strangers, Eve and Max, risk everything to expose the truth. Kira steps in to help. Or does she? The story plays with the line between what’s real and what’s engineered, a theme that only lands convincingly when the characters themselves feel real.

Getting there meant building a full motion and facial capture pipeline, not settling for the shortcuts that usually stand in for it. Softmachine paired motion capture from Bones Studio with Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman Animator, handled through Pixable Studios and Mastersolution AG, to capture full-body performance and facial nuance together and translate both onto a 360° dome screen, a format far less forgiving of stiff or approximate animation than a flat cinema screen.

That technical foundation is what let the production layer in live-action performers and choreographed stunts on top of the captured animation, blending techniques rather than relying on just one.

The result premiered at the Centennial gala for the Planetarium Jena’s 100th anniversary at the Deutsches Museum and Zeiss-Planetarium Jena on 21 October 2023, under the patronage of German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and has since become the most-watched fulldome title on Sandwich Vision, Apple Vision Pro’s immersive platform.

Why it matters for you: This is Softmachine’s production technology in practice. Access to motion and facial capture pipelines, MetaHuman-driven character animation, and the expertise to make it hold up on a demanding 360° screen. If your project needs characters an audience actually believes, this is the level of technical capability behind them.