The 3D Computer Graphics Industry represents a vibrant €115 billion global opportunity (2016) poised for spectacular growth. By 2022, the 3D Graphics market will represent €282 billion, a 2.5x increase from current levels. Studios creating 3D content are already at the limits of human capacity and are challenged to meet the current market demands. Artomatix revolutionises the way 3D art is created. Instead of designing, say, an intricate brick wall pixel by pixel for use in a video game scene, one could take a photo of a brick wall with their phone and Artomatix will extrapolate the rest, imagining a new ‘virtual’ brick wall. Rather than being the paintbrush, your computer acts as the painter. Instead of being the painter, an artist will become the art director, providing the high level guidance and vision.Artomatix is offering this ‘virtual painter’ as a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that can increase the industries art asset production capacity from 69 million assets in 2016 to 95 million, and to beyond 236m by 2022. With that in mind, Artomatix addresses several EU-wide challenges referenced in the following documents, “Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries”, “Towards a data-driven economy” and "Unleashing the potential of cloud computing in Europe”. The 3D Computer Graphics Industry’s annual wages for 3D artists are expected to reach €63.6bn by 2022, up from €25.8bn in 2016, highlighting the strong potential of automated 3D content creation solutions. Based on our feasibility assessment, software development, sales and marketing efforts and our elaborated business plan, subject to obtaining funding for the project, it is our intention to secure a 0.78% market share of the 3D content creation market (~1.3m assets), have 55k 3D artists using the Artomatix Suite by 2022, generate annual revenues of €16.3 million, and create jobs for up to 123 full time staff.

Video streaming consists in the encoding, transcoding, delivering, decoding & displaying of videos on smartphones, tablets, PCs, smart TVs & consoles. Videos distributed “over-the-top” (OTT) are streamed rather than distributed through traditional networks (broadcast, pay TV) and distributors (cable, satellite). OTT is a vibrant $25bn market (2016) poised for spectacular growth: by 2025, it will reach $129bn, a 5.2x increase driven by powerhouses like Netflix and YouTube. Habits are changing fast: by 2020, 32% of videos will be consumed OTT (16h/week), vs. 5% in 2000 (2h/week). Video streaming represents 63% of Internet traffic (2018) and is on the rise, going from 76k petabytes per month in 2018 to 160k in 2021 (x2.1) and driven by a push to 4K that quadruples traffic. While developed countries are challenged to address this surge, half of the World’s population still doesn’t have the Internet and is unlikely to be able to stream content when they get it, reinforcing the “Digital Divide”. Reducing this burden will lead to a faster, cheaper and more stable Internet. It will slash content delivery costs, which reach millions of dollars a month for media companies. It will result in major savings for Internet providers that invest ~$300bn/year in infrastructure, or give them the opportunity to achieve much more for a similar investment. Our goal is to decrease video streaming traffic by 80% while retaining video resolution and increasing quality. To do so, Artomatix and THEO will develop ENHANCEplayer, a solution that leverages Deep Learning to automatically increase the resolution and quality of videos on consumer devices. Built on top of THEO’s successful THEOplayer, it will consume the data of, say, a 360p video but display a High Definition one (1080p), effectively saving 84% in traffic. Public broadcasters NPO, RTP & VRT will help Artomatix & THEO define the product specifications, provide them with test videos and test the product once it is developed.