Red 5 Studios Licenses Morpheme For MMORPG
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Red 5 Studios Adds NaturalMotion's morpheme to Next Gen Pipeline
Advanced Animation Engine and Toolchain Gives Animators More Control Over Final In-game Animation
San Diego Aug. 6, 2007 NaturalMotion Ltd., developers of the highly-acclaimed euphoria and endorphin 3D animation technologies, today announced that Red 5 Studios has added morpheme to its game development pipeline. Chosen for its intuitive graphical user interface and ability to increase collaboration between animators and programmers, Red 5 Studios is using morpheme for an unannounced next generation game title. morpheme is robust middleware designed to give developers and 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. NaturalMotion will highlight morpheme during SIGGRAPH 2007, booth number 603.
(We added morpheme to our pipeline because we wanted to give our animators more control over the final animations that would go into the game,) said Mark Kern, president and CEO of Red 5 Studios. (In a lot of other systems, after the animators export their work, they don't get to see how the animations interact until it is in the game. If they then need to tweak a transition between animations or states, they have to edit a text file and then run the game again, which usually tears at an animator's soul. morpheme has an intuitive graphical interface that allows animators to go in and setup all these transitions and preview them without involving much programmer intervention. It cuts down on the time that a programmer and animator need to work together to get a system working within the game, and let's the animator focus on what they were hired to do - animate.)
(The team behind Red 5 Studios has one of the most impressive track records in MMOs, be it commercial, creative or technical,) said Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. (We are aware how important Red 5 Studio's technology decisions are, and are proud they have chosen morpheme as their animation engine.)
About morpheme
morpheme consists of two components: morpheme:runtime and morpheme:connect. morpheme:runtime is a run-time engine optimized for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, and ships with full source code. morpheme:connect is a powerful 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 and view the results in real-time. morpheme is designed as a flexible and open system and does not require the licensing of any other product. Unlike euphoria, morpheme is not based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis. Instead, morpheme complements euphoria's advanced real-time behaviors.
About Red 5 Studios
Founded in September 2005 by key members behind Blizzard Entertainment®'s World of WarCraft®, including Team Lead Mark Kern, Art Director William Petras, and co-founder of Blizzard Korea Taewon Yun, Red 5 Studios is dedicated to bringing together millions of gamers across the world by creating immersive worlds, intriguing stories and compelling characters. Red 5 may be reached on the web at http://www.red5studios.com.
About NaturalMotion
NaturalMotion Ltd. is the first company to create 3D character animation software based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS), a technology that utilizes Adaptive Behaviours and artificial intelligence to simulate the human-nervous system. Based on Oxford University research on the control of body movements, NaturalMotion's euphoria synthesizes 3D character animation in real time on Playstation® 3, Xbox 360® and PC, thus creating unique game moments and previously unachievable interactivity. NaturalMotion's other DMS product endorphin creates off-line animation an order of magnitude faster than traditional techniques, and is widely used in the film and games industries, with customers such as Sony, Giant Killer Robots, The Mill, Capcom, Namco and Konami. NaturalMotion's third product, morpheme, is the industry's first graphically authorable animation engine designed to give animators full control over the look of their animations in-game.
