Subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment
AI Usage at a Glance
May 8, 2026
ProductivityPractice documented: Sony Interactive Entertainment uses an internal AI tool called Mockingbird at its first-party game studios to automatically generate 3D facial animations from performance capture data, a task that previously required hours of manual animator work.
Practice DocumentedView practice →May 8, 2026
ProductivityPractice documented: Sony Interactive Entertainment uses an internal AI tool at its first-party studios that converts video footage of real hairstyles into detailed strand-level 3D hair models, reducing what had been a labor-intensive manual process.
Practice DocumentedView practice →Sony Interactive Entertainment uses an internal AI tool at its first-party studios that converts video footage of real hairstyles into detailed strand-level 3D hair models, reducing what had been a labor-intensive manual process.
According to CEO Hideaki Nishino's May 2026 earnings presentation, the tool takes video recordings of real hairstyles as input and outputs 3D models containing hundreds of individual strand models. Nishino described hair animation as 'often a labor-intensive process, given the volume of strands that must be created.' The tool has been used on released PlayStation Studios titles. No specific tool name was disclosed for this system, and the exact studios using it were not named separately from the broader group of PlayStation Studios.
Sony Interactive Entertainment uses an internal AI tool called Mockingbird at its first-party game studios to automatically generate 3D facial animations from performance capture data, a task that previously required hours of manual animator work.
Sony Interactive Entertainment uses an internal AI tool at its first-party studios that converts video footage of real hairstyles into detailed strand-level 3D hair models, reducing what had been a labor-intensive manual process.
Sony Interactive Entertainment uses an internal AI tool called Mockingbird at its first-party game studios to automatically generate 3D facial animations from performance capture data, a task that previously required hours of manual animator work.
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Mockingbird uses machine learning to convert performance capture recordings into animated 3D facial models. According to Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino, animation work that previously took hours can now be completed in a fraction of a second. Studios including Naughty Dog and San Diego Studio have adopted the tool, and it has already been used in released titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony has stated that Mockingbird does not replace human performers, but optimizes how their captured data is processed.