From: bizjournals.com

Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) has acquiredZync, a cloud-based visual effects service that spun out of Boston’s Zero VFX.

Zync was founded about five years ago and offers technology for visual designers and artists in the film industry.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

This is the second film-related acquisition that Google has made in the Boston area in less than a month. Google acquired two-year-old Boston-based moviemaking mobile app startup Directr earlier this month.

According to a blog post on Zync’s website, the “Google Cloud Platform will help us offer an even better service to our customers – including more scalability, more host packages and better pricing (including per-minute billing). With a friction-free, affordable, and elastic rendering solution, visual designers and artists in the industry can continue to do their best work.”

In a recent interview, Zero VFX and Zync’s co-founders said Zync is a software tool that allows the company to process all production images in the cloud.

That cloud-based software helped the company to execute visual effects for 600 shots in “The Equalizer” — an amount that would normally require an entire machine room of computers to execute, they said.

Zero VFX is the Boston-based visual effects firm that worked on the 2013 feature film “American Hustle” and aims to double its employee headcount this year and spin off its own production company within three years.

The company aims to have 45 employees by the end of the year, up from 25, and could start creating its own feature films, animated feature films and TV shows within three years, said Brian Drewes, company co-founder and head of production.

The firm, founded in 2010 and bootstrapped since its inception, is in talks about raising capital for the new production company.

“We’re starting to look at that as our next big step because the thing about project work is that it comes and goes,” Drewes said previously.