Fortnite developer Epic Games has made two purchases in the last few days.

The firm has bought Serbian start-up 3Lateral, whose tools make it easier to design digital humans - something that is clearly of interest to a company in the games space.

There is broader application here, such as animation for films and other media. Epic's big engine rival Unity has had its tech used in movies such as Ready Player One in the past, so it's possible the Unreal firm is hoping to develop its business outside of video games.

Spending spree

“Creating digital humans requires a deep understanding of every aspect of our appearance and motion, both of which portray our inner self and tell stories around us. We read all these visual cues with great precision as instinct to analyse an image of another human being is deeply embedded in our DNA,” said 3Lateral founder and director Vladimir Mastilovic.

“Observing, analysing and reconstructing these mechanisms has always fascinated us at 3Lateral, and we are excited to have joined a like-minded team at Epic Games with such strong desire to solve this near impossible problem.”

Meanwhile, Epic has also purchased Agog Labs, the developer of SkookumScript for Unreal Engine 4. Announced via LinkedIn, the deal was inked in December.

The SkookumScript programming language and toolset allows developers to quickly build concepts for their projects.

"Here at Agog Labs our goal has always been to create authoring and development tools that allow people to focus on bringing their passionate imaginings to life," said Agog CEO Conan Reis.

"We melt our brains so you don't have to. Epic has the same goals and spark of mad science, which makes it easy to align our paths. We're honoured to become part of the Epic family."

This story was originally published on our sister-site PCGamesInsider.biz.