Naver-backed Cinamon wants to make 3D video animation easier using AI
It has never been so easy to make and publish art than now, and if you think the companies are building technology around AI, the production process becomes even more efficient. This is especially the case with video production, where companies of all types of large language models use to build tools with which you can prepare videos and animation of decent quality with a few prompts and promotions.
Popular tools in this space are Google’s VEO 2, OpenAi’s Sora, Runway, Luma Ai and Hailuo from Shanghai. Now, called a South Korean startup Kinamon Efforts are being increased to claim part of this fast -growing market – it recently raised a $ 8.5 million series B -round to continue to build its animated platform for generating videos, planned to be launched in Beta In the first half of 2025. Altos Ventures, an existing backer, as well as Saehan Daring capital invested in this round.
The pitch of Cinamon is that the platform offers a videoerator with which you can build 3D environments, create scenes and promotions, place signs, camera branches and more edit – all with text prompts and sliding regulators.
According to the CEO Doosun Hong, the approach of the company varies fundamentally from existing AI video drivers, making videos by generating pixels using text, images and videos as reference material. Cinev, on the other hand, combines a 3D assistant library, AI Motion Generation and a large language model-oriented language model to first construct 3D scenes, complete with characters and elements, and then have them edited using the package of video production and processing tools.
“Our approach ensures easier direction and processing without problems with consistency/physics, making it particularly suitable for content with a longer form, such as films and dramas,” Hong said. “We propose that CineV is complementary to existing AI-VideoTools, which may make new workflows possible where the output of CINEV could serve as high-quality reference material for other AI-video platforms.”
Cinamon started life in 2019 as Cinamon Games, a subsidiary of content production company Vonvon. Cinamon initially set up a JV with afterer web tone, a Korean digital story platform, to perhaps make an interactive stories app. Faced with growing problems with data privacy, Vonvon merged later in 2019 with Cinamon games to concentrate alone on stories in the room for social content.
While his competitors such as Crazy Maple Studio started offering animated interactive story apps, fiction apps, story stories apps and short videos, Cinamon chose to concentrate on making 3D animation tools that production of the production of Animation for content makers and studios could accelerate and scales for content makers and studios. Although it costs more investments than tools for 2D content, they saw a larger scalability potential.
In 2022, the startup started to build its 3D animation platform and later integrated AI functions to improve production efficiency. In September of that year, the South Korean gaming company Krafton, Naver Z (a unit of Korean internet giant afterwards) and Snow, (a camera app run by retirement), $ 10 million in Cinamon’s series A.
In the future, Cinamon is planning to use the IPs of its investors and 3D assets to strengthen the offer. Krafton has considerably intellectual property and 3D assets used in its battlefield games, while afterwards it operates the Zepeto Metaverse platform. Cinamon says that Cinev can help to expand these IPs further than gaming by enabling content makers to use these IPs and possibly stimulate user acquisition for Kraft and Naver Z. Cinamon, the NVIDIA StartUp narrower also went into Inception, last August.
“Our potential users are Comic, Manga, Webtoon Artists, Web Novel Writers, Game Developers, Video Makers and Traditional Animators who are looking for easier workflows,” Hong said. “In 2025 we are planning to concentrate on customers [ranging] From individual makers to content IP companies that are looking for easier, faster, cheaper ways to create anime, vtuber and cinematic video game. “
Cinamon is planning to use the new capital for hiring more AI and for R&D. The startup has a team of 60 employees with expertise in 3D images, AI, gaming and content production. This series B brings its total capital to $ 18.5 million (25 billion WFS) so far.
