Apple makes 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' a reality with latest Swiss acquisition

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Apple has acquired the company Faceshift, a startup that made the visual effects technology used in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

The newly-acquired technology could strengthen the company's products and could possibly be used as a face identifier, according to Business Insider. Apple has acquired several companies in the past to improve their product features including PrimeSense, Polar Rose and Metaio and Faceshift could help them vastly improve their patents and even expand.

Tech Crunch reports that the rumors of buying Faceshift started earlier this year. Several employees from the startup are rumoredly working for Apple after the acquisition.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," an Apple spokesperson allegedly told the news site.

Faceshift has created their own brand of visual effects technology that can be used to create animated avatars and other figures that can capture facial expressions for movies or games.

"Faceshift studio is a facial motion capture software solution which revolutionizes facial animation, making it possible at every desk," the company wrote in their website. "The software analyzes the facial movements of an actor and describes them as a mixture of basic expressions, plus head orientation, and eye gaze. This description is then used to animate virtual characters for use in any situation where facial animation is required, such as movie and game production."

The startup's technology was even used in the latest "Star Wars" film as it made non-human characters facial expressions more expressive.

A preview can be seen in 0:41 of the video below:

According to BBC, the acquisition of the new company may not be used for Google's up and coming virtual reality technology.

"This acquisition fits in with some of Apple's most recent deals which have centered on machine learning and related technologies such as voice recognition, augmented reality and artificial intelligence," Piers Harding-Rolls, an expert and analyst, told the outlet.

Faceshift was originally founded by Thibaut Weise, Brian Amberg and Sofien Bouaziz from Zurich and was meant to be a "spinoff" of the Computer Graphics and Geometry Laboratory at the école Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. According to TC, the Switzerland school used to own two facial animation patents of the company but it was transferred by August this year before Google acquired the company.

Film and gaming industry expert Doug Griffin used to work for Faceshift in the West Coast offices. There is another on in London too and is led by Nico Scapel, a visual effects specialist who has been involved in several films.