Theia Interactive has named veteran product manager Nimrod Friedmann as its senior project and engagement manager, overseeing expansion throughout the EMEA region, as part of its ongoing expansion to expand its global footprint.
Theia Interactive
To readers unfamiliar, Theia Interactive develops bespoke visualization solutions and workflows, like their work with Suffolk Construction on the Boston Logan International Airport expansion.
The company also produces a solution called Optim—a simplified Unreal Engine solution that enables visualization professionals to work more optimally with the Unreal Engine from Epic. The solution facilitates a multi-user collaborative space inside of Unreal Engine via its ready-to-use Collaboration Templates.
A sample rendering of the work Theia Interactive did for Suffolk Construction at Logan International.
Claria is another solution that is built for the aerospace, automotive, AEC, and retail and manufacturing industries. It deploys in a VR environment and uses a specialized headset and sensors that enable heart rate, pupil dilation, eye vector, and cognitive load measures. The bio-signal readings provide analytical feedback useful for decision-support.
Nimrod Friedmann
Friedmann is a known figure to Architosh’s editors via his tenure at CL3VER. He also had tenures at Autodesk and immediately prior to joining Theia he was senior product manager for 3ds Max before founding his own visualization studio. He was also a staff lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, focusing on 3D design.
Joining forces with Theia was an easy decision for me. Their culture is excellent and easy to step into, and the quality of Theia’s Unreal services work is some of the best I’ve seen.
“Nimrod’s experience as both a creator and a project leader made him the perfect candidate to help us expand into new markets around the world, beginning with EMEA,” said Bill Fishkin, founder, and CEO of Theia Interactive. “With Nimrod in place, Theia will be able to hit the ground running, immediately offering some of the best UE4 visualization work in the world, as well as a new level of support for Optim.”
“Joining forces with Theia was an easy decision for me,” said Friedmann. “Their culture is excellent and easy to step into, and the quality of Theia’s Unreal services work is some of the best I’ve seen. The potential for expansion into the EMEA area is limitless, and demand for a company with Theia’s reputation and experience is very much there.”
Friedmann’s responsibilities include developing Theia’s EMEA team, which will be dedicated to driving growth across the company. He will also oversee services throughout the region, and help usher in new software solutions. Friedmann will be based out of Denia, Spain, while reporting to Theia’s global headquarters in Chico, California.
Theia’s Optim provides a powerful and simplified UI/UX for Unreal Engine designed for visualization professionals, complete with some analytics dashboards.
Friedmann’s position is the first of several planned hires throughout 2021, each dedicated to growing Theia’s visualization services, along with its Optim software platform and Claria bioanalytic tool.
More Critical Hires for Theia
In addition to Friedmann, Theia Interactive also welcomes two new senior product managers. Max Sims joins Theia after stops at Maya, VW Electronics Lab, and think3. He also founded the Imaginarium VR Lab for the Humanities at Santa Clara University and was part of the Oscar-winning team at Alias (now Autodesk). Sims will be joined by Peter DeLappe, a veteran of the computer graphics industry with more than 35 years of experience in film, television, games, architecture, and engineering. His resume includes stints at Nvidia, Avid, Havok, and Autodesk to name a few.
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Friedmann, Sims, and DeLappe join Theia as it continues to expand its visualization and services portfolio while increasing its reputation as a software maker. Founded in 2014, Theia has quickly become one of the preeminent visualization firms in the United States, offering high-quality virtual reality environments for architecture, engineering, and retail clients. Its list of clients includes Logan Airport, Epic Games, and the Hard Rock Hotel chain. With work ranging from residential and commercial builds to 3D asset libraries, Theia now lists well over 100 clients around the world.
In 2019, Theia officially entered the software space with the commercialization of Optim, its in-house tool built to simplify and speed up content creation in Unreal Engine. Optim recently introduced a multi-user VR template, making it easier than ever for global teams to work remotely in Unreal. In 2020, Theia also introduced Claria, a suite of bioanalytic software tools designed to analyze a person’s physical responses while in VR. Created exclusively for the upcoming HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset, Claria offers easy-to-understand datasets, designed to give design and marketing professionals invaluable analytic insight, free of bias and external influences. Claria will be released in 2021.
About Theia Interactive
Based in Chico, California, Theia Interactive is an immersive solutions studio and software developer, with a passion for building beautiful virtual environments for Enterprise businesses. Whether it’s virtual reality experiences, augmented reality demos, or mobile apps, Theia tells engaging stories through virtualization. Theia has created award-winning projects for companies such as Epic Games, HP, Mohawk Group, NVIDIA, Suffolk Construction, and Toll Brothers. For more information visit https://theia.io/.