April 1, 2009

Autodesk and NaturalMotion

GDC 2009 - Autodesk Inc. and NaturalMotion Ltd. are working to build an advanced integration between their respective game-development products: Autodesk Kynapse artificial-intelligence (AI) middleware and morpheme animation middleware engine.
NaturalMotion's morpheme is robust animation middleware designed to give developers and animators 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. Since its launch in 2007, morpheme has seen rapid adoption in the games industry, including customers such as BioWare, Eidos, Disney, and many other leading publishers.

The latest version, morpheme 2.0, adds natively integrated physics support for flexible addition and authoring of character dynamics. Autodesk Kynapse middleware is an AI solution for games. This unique, high-performance, AI engine supports 3D pathfinding in destructible environments, including large-crowd pathfinding in complex terrains. It also delivers dynamic 3D topology analysis, team co-ordination, and efficient tools that help automate production. Kynapse has been adopted for more than 80 AAA titles. Autodesk also offers Autodesk HumanIK middleware, a solution for procedural motion adaptation and correction that helps to enhance existing animation engines.