morpheme
Licensed by THQ for, among other things, an upcoming by Kaos Studios project.
SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK - April 15, 2009
NaturalMotion, the animation technology company behind the euphoria engine, today announced that publisher THQ Inc. has licensed its morpheme animation middleware for use on future projects, including an unannounced title by Kaos Studios. The publisher recently announced that it has also licensed NVIDIA® PhysX™ technology, which is tightly integrated with morpheme’s character animation to produce dramatic results.
morpheme is robust animation 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. Since its launch in 2007, morpheme has seen rapid adoption in the games industry, including customers such as BioWare, Eidos and Disney.
Kaos Studios, the development team behind Frontlines™: Fuel of War™, will be one of the first THQ studios to make use of morpheme. The studio recently announced that it will be expanding its workforce as it continues development on an unannounced project.
“morpheme offers unprecedented control over run-time character animation. With version 2.0, its graphical authoring capabilities extend to physics, and character interactions with physical environments,” said Christian Staack, vice president of sales for North America at NaturalMotion. “THQ sees value in this powerful combination, and we will work closely with any of the publisher’s studios that take advantage of this deal.”
“NaturalMotion’s technology is invaluable to animators and developers, and the seamless integration of morpheme and PhysX helps to cut down production times and costs on these parts of the development process,” said Roy Tessler, vice president of production, worldwide at THQ. “Kaos Studios chose morpheme as their character animation solution after an in-depth evaluation, and we are glad to be able to make this purchase part of a wider licensing deal across THQ.”
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 Behaviors and artificial intelligence to simulate the human-nervous system. Based on research conducted at Oxford University on the control of body movements, NaturalMotion’s euphoria synthesizes 3D character animation in real time on PLAYSTATION®3, Xbox 360® and PC. Having debuted in Rockstar Games’ record-breaking Grand Theft Auto IV, euphoria is also featured in LucasArts’ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
NaturalMotion’s off-line DMS product endorphin creates animation an order of magnitude faster than traditional techniques, and is widely used in the film and game 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. Announced morpheme customers include Ninja Theory, IO Interactive, Bioware and Red 5.
For further information please visit NaturalMotion’s website www.naturalmotion.com, or join the 160,000 endorphin LE users at community.naturalmotion.com.
©euphoria, endorphin and morpheme are registered trademarks of NaturalMotion Ltd.
Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox Live are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. "PLAYSTATION" is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
About THQ
THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) is a leading worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software. The company develops its products for all popular game systems, personal computers and wireless devices. Headquartered in Los Angeles County, California, THQ sells product through its global network of offices located throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. More information about THQ and its products may be found at www.thq.com. THQ, Kaos Studios, Frontlines: Fuel of War and their respective logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of THQ Inc.
Wes Phillips, TriplePoint for NaturalMotion
(415) 955-8500
wes@triplepointpr.com
Julie MacMedan, THQ Inc.
(818) 871-5125
Julie.macmedan@thq.com