NEWS - Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Next-Gen Animation Technology
Next-Generation Animation Technology NaturalMotion announces an engine to power games of the future. NaturalMotion Ltd. announced today their run-time animation technology, euphoria, which will be used for development in AAA next-generation games on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Though precisely which games have yet to be revealed, the euphoria engine promises to be a step forward for character animations. Using euphoria, developers can escape the need to pre-program character reactions. Instead, the engine will take into account multiple variables like physics and degree of force to determine how an in-game model should react, making for distinctive results every time. "euphoria enables a whole new level of interactivity and realism during game play," says Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. "Every time euphoria synthesizes what happens on the screen you know that no player has seen it before. It makes every game your unique experience. Every football tackle is your tackle. Every haymaker is your haymaker. It’s not canned animation data, it’s you. These unique game moments are what next-generation games are all about." Based on NaturalMotion’s Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) technology, euphoria allows for A.I. to act as though they possess a central nervous system. In addition to producing more realistic animations, this technology is also purported to reduce development time because of its autonomous calculations. We’ll have to wait for further announcements and information regarding which specific titles are using the technology, and to what ends.Source: http://www.ign.com
