Didimo

Didimo is a 3D character technology company whose current product, Popul8, automates character creation for game development. The platform generates fully rigged NPCs and crowds using a studio's own topology and technical specifications, produces large numbers of character variations, performs automated fitting of assets across characters, and includes built-in QA verification. Output is prepared for integration into game engines including Unreal, Unity and proprietary engines. The company also announced a Popul8 Character Editor offering real-time character customization in Unity and Unreal.

Earlier, the company was positioned around "digital humans": a cloud-based API that turned a single uploaded photo or scanned facial image into an animatable 3D digital twin, using an algorithm to extract facial features such as bone structure and rebuild them as a 3D model. The resulting avatars supported speech and facial expression driven by motion capture animation, were cross-platform and customizable for integration into existing workflows, and the end user retained ownership of the twin. The company described avatar creation times reduced from days to about 60 seconds and identified retail and digital media, as well as medicine and sports, as target application areas.

Didimo was founded in 2016 by Verónica Costa Orvalho and operates as Didimo, Inc. with entities in Portugal (Didimo S.A.) and the UK (Mydidimo UK Ltd.).

Founding story

Didimo was founded in 2016 by Verónica Costa Orvalho, an Argentinian-born university computer-science lecturer, and takes its name from the Greek word for "twin." Orvalho holds a software engineering degree from the University of Belgrano, a master's in videogame design and development from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and a PhD from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia with a thesis on fast and reusable facial rigging and animation. She had earlier founded Face In Motion in 2007, focused on cinematic-quality facial animation, and led the Porto Interactive Center at the University of Porto, which focuses on facial animation research.

Business model

Didimo licenses its character-creation software to game studios, marketing Popul8 to developers ranging from indie teams to AAA studios; the website's primary conversion path is booking a private online product demo rather than self-serve purchase. Earlier the technology was offered as a cloud-based API/platform for generating 3D avatars from photographs, sold to brands and platform partners.

Software sold to game studios via demo-led commercial engagements; earlier the digital human technology was delivered as a cloud-based platform/API for brands and partners.

Traction

Public references to named users include Colossal Order, which used Popul8 for character creation in Cities: Skylines II, plus Avalon and Playable Worlds, whose executives are quoted on the company site. Earlier reporting cited pilot projects with Sony and Amazon and partnerships with Universal Studios, Microsoft and CEEK VR, and 22 staff at the Porto headquarters as of early 2020.

Latest developments

In August 2026 Didimo announced the Popul8 Character Editor bringing real-time character customization to Unity and Unreal. In July 2025 it announced a partnership with P-Labs to simplify in-game NPC generation.