NaturalMotion Ships morpheme

NaturalMotion Ships morpheme

NaturalMotion Ltd., developer of the euphoria and endorphin Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) technologies, today announced the immediate availability of morpheme, a new animation engine for next-generation game development. The company will demonstrate the product publicly for the first time at booth No. 118 during the 2007 Game Developers Conference, taking place this week at in San Francisco, Calif.

Available for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, morpheme features a flexible 3D authoring tool chain and is designed to give animators unprecedented creative control over the look of their final in-game animation by allowing them to author and preview blends, blend trees and transition graphs in real time.

‘We developed morpheme to improve the workflow for next-generation game developers,’ says NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil. ‘By backing up a next-gen animation engine with a strong 3D authoring application, animators and programmers are now able to work hand-in-hand, in real time, to create fluid in-game animation that truly reflects the quality of the source data.’

The morpheme engine consists of two components: morpheme:runtime, a run-time engine that ships with full source code, and morpheme:connect, a 3D authoring application that allows animators to graphically author blend trees and transition logic (based on hierarchical finite state machines), modify and edit parameters through sliders or game pads, and view the results in real time. Designed as a flexible and open system, morpheme does not require the licensing of any other product but is made to seamlessly integrate with other leading 3D animation software and middleware technologies such as physics engines.

Morpheme is not based on NaturalMotion’s DMS technology, which utilizes Adaptive Behaviors and artificial intelligence to simulate the human-nervous system. It is, however, designed to complement euphoria, an innovation that synthesizes 3D character animation in real time to eliminate canned animations in favor of unique gameplay moments. For more information on NaturalMotion and its products, go to www.naturalmotion.com.