Nozon is a post production facility delivering high quality visual effects, 3D animation and fully immersive 360° CG movies.

Since 1998 we have grown steadily to become a well-known reference thanks to our artistic approach and strong R&D department.

Clients worldwide trust us every day to achieve complex VFX and 3D animation on their productions. This includes TV commercial, feature films and series, music videos and documentaries.

Acknowledging that a revolution initiated by Oculus was happening in Virtual Reality, Nozon wanted to apply its skills and know-how to produce the ultimate immersive movie.

The problem was that technologies available were not satisfactory (see next point "the technology"). We decided then to develop our own technology to achieve perfect image quality, total comfort and full immersion. It is now working and we called it PresenZ.

The original idea of PresenZ came from Tristan Salomé, head of R&D department.

The team dedicated to the development of PresenZ was led by:

1. Tristan Salomé: Head of research and development and one of the founder of Nozon.

Graduated in chemical engineering, Tristan post-graduated in artificial intelligence and worked in augmented and virtual reality in the 90's. He then founded Nozon together with 3D artists Chris Mascarello and Michael De Coninck.

2. Gaël Honorez: Developer/ Lighting and shading supervisor.

Graduated in Graphic design, Gaël started to work directly at Nozon and developing tools for different rendering software. He was responsible for the offline part of the rendering for PresenZ.

Nozon invested around 300 000 euros and more than one year in developing PresenZ.

PresenZ is revolutionary technology for creating immersive movies.

The 2 technologies that were used until now are both limited:

- 360 movies projected on a sphere cause easily cibersickness and the immersion is not satisfactory.

- Real time game engines don't enable high image quality.

As PresenZ enables interactive parallax in pre-rendered 360° CG movies, we can deliver the image quality of a sci-fi blockbuster together with the immersive feeling of a real-time game engine.

Another main benefit of the technology is that 3D assets created for a standard movie can be reused as-is. As we are coming at the end of the production pipeline, characters, animations, textures or lighting can be reused and re-rendered in our system.

PresenZ is a series of plugins on a rendering software (Arnold for the moment, but we will extend it to other rendering software) that create a new file format and a player playing back the right image according to the position of your head. The technology allows the viewer to move his head inside a "zone of view" where the parallax and stereoscopy are correct on every point.

PresenZ is already working for full computer generated content.

The technology is compatible with any Virtual Reality head mounted display with positional tracking such as the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive.

PresenZ was until now developed on Nozon's capital equity but we are looking now for 1 million euros for further developments and marketing. In the near future, we intend to port the system to the next generation of mobile head mounted displays (such as the Samsung Gear VR) and build a camera allowing us to capture live action.

The long-term goal of the PresenZ project is to become the technological standard for immersive movies. This is why we decided not only to produce content ourselves but also to license the technology.

Some major visual effects companies are already in the alpha program testing our technology and about 20 others are waiting for the Beta phase.

We have contacts with major studios who want to use PresenZ for their next Virtual Reality movies.

As stated before, the system is already working for full computer generated content.

Our development timeline is planned as following:

- Porting on other rendering software: July 2015

- Editing and color grading tools: August 2015

- Compression to make the file downloadable from home : October 2015

- Adaptation for next version of the Samsung Gear VR (with positional tracking): December 2015

- Building of a camera: Q2 2016