Adobe Acquires Facebook’s Oculus Medium VR Tool

Social media giant Facebook is selling Oculus Medium, its virtual reality sculpting tool, to Adobe, reports revealed on Saturday (Dec. 7).

Oculus Medium is an immersive 3D sculpting tool used in filmmaking and video games. Facebook bought the tech and VR firm for $2 billion in 2014 and launched Medium two years later. The terms of the deal were not shared by either of the companies.

With Medium, users can draw, paint, simulate action and create 3D models in a VR environment. The Oculus team was becoming too expensive for Facebook, and the decision to sell could indicate that Facebook is streamlining the virtual reality projects it concentrates on.

“Adobe is one of the world’s leading creation software companies, and they’re committed to providing best-in-class 3D and immersive tools for artists, including Adobe Dimension and the Substance tools suite,” Medium said in a blog post announcing the sale on Friday (Dec. 6). “Medium joining the Adobe family brings both new talent and technology to Adobe and solidifies Medium’s position as a premier sculpting application and professional tool.”

As Medium continues to evolve, there will be other developments coming from Adobe in 2020, the post said.

“Medium has been a beacon of creativity in the virtual reality space, pushing creative and technical boundaries of 3D modeling,” Sebastien Deguy, Adobe 3D and immersive vice president, said in a statement.

Deguy said while he was at Allegorithmic, which was acquired by Adobe in January, the company “always looked up to Medium” and saw it as something “we’d love to tackle.”

He noted that Adobe has stepped up its investment in the 3D and AR space and that the “Substance and Medium teams are ready to work together on the next generation of 3D tools.”

In May, Oculus has announced the impending launch of the new Oculus for Business, designed to streamline and expand virtual reality (VR) in the workplace.