Cinamon backed by Naver wants to make it easier to make use of 3D video animations using AI

It has never been easier to create and publish art than it is now, and if you believe that companies that create technology around AI, the production process will become even more effective. This is especially happening with video producing, with companies of all sizes using large language models to make tools that allow you to plague video decent quality and animation with some prompts and actions.

The popular tools in this area include Google’s VEO 2, Openai Sora, Runway, Luma AI and Shanghai -based Hailuo. Now, a start of South Korea called Natmos It increases efforts to claim part of this growing market – recently set a B $ 8.5m Round to continue to build the “Cinev” generation platform, which will start at Beta in the first half of 2025. Altos Ventures, an existing supporter, as well as the Saehan Venture Capital invested in this round.

The step of Cinamon is that its platform provides a video generator that can allow you to create 3D environments, direct scenes and actions, place characters, camera corners and more – all with text prompts and regulations.

According to Doosun Hong’s CEO, the company’s approach is fundamentally different from existing AI video generators, which create videos of creating pixels using text, images and videos as reference materials. On the contrary, Cinev combines a 3D asset library, AI Motion Generation and a large linguistic model that focuses on directing to make 3D scenes with characters and elements and then allows you to edit them using the suite of video and video tools processing.

“Our approach allows us easier direction and processing without consistency/physics issues, making it particularly suitable for larger content such as films and dramas,” Hong said. “We believe that Cinev is complementary to existing AI video tools, it may allow new workflows where Cinev’s output could serve as high quality reference material for other AI video platforms.”

Cinamon started his life in 2019 as Cinamon Games, a subsidiary of Vonvon Content Production Company. Cinamon initially installed a JV with Naver Webtoon, a Korean digital storytelling platform, to create an interactive narrative application. Facing increasing concerns about privacy, Vonvon merged with Cinamon games later in 2019 to focus solely on narrative in the field of social content.

While its competitors, such as Crazy Maple Studio, began offering moving applications of interactive history, fictional applications, narrative applications and small video applications, Cinamon chose to focus on creating 3D cartoon tools that could accelerate and scale production Moving images for creators and content studio. Although it costs more investments than 2D content tools, they saw greater scalability potential.

In 2022, the start began to build the cartoon 3D platform and later integrated AI features to enhance production effectiveness. In September of that year, South Korean gambling company Krafton, Naver Z (Naver’s Korean online giant unit) and Snow (a camera run by Naver), invested $ 10 million in the Cinamon series A.

Moving forward, Cinamon plans to use investor IPS and 3D assets to enhance his offer. Krafton has significant intellectual property and 3D assets used in battle games, while Naver Z exploits the Zepeto Metaverse platform. Cinamon says Cinev can help extend these IPs beyond gambling, allowing content creators to use these IPs and possibly lead users to Krafton and Naver Z. Cinamon to also enter At Nvidia Startup Accelerator, Start, last August.

“Our potential users include comics, manga, webtoon artists, web novel authors, game developers, video creators and traditional animators looking for easier work flows,” Hong said. ‘In 2025 we plan to focus on customers [ranging] From individual creators to content companies that seek easier, faster, cheaper ways of creating anime, vtuber and cinematic video games. ”

Cinamon plans to use the new chapter to hire more AI engineers and for R&D. The start has a group of 60 employees with expertise in 3D graphics, AIs, gambling and content production. This series B brings its total capital that has increased to $ 18.5 million ($ 25 billion KRW) so far.