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NaturalMotion Teams With NVIDIA
Posted by Mike Fahey at 7:30 AM on June 12, 2008
Game developers and publishers should have no trouble at all creating realistic worlds and populating them with realistic people as NaturalMotion and NVIDIA announce a partnership that pairs the former's morpheme animation engine with the latter's PhysX technology in one powerful force of realistically moving goodness.
"We're deeply impressed by NVIDIA's commitment to push physics to new levels of fidelity and performance, and their investment in development and support infrastructure across all platforms," said Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. "NVIDIA's PhysX technology provides a robust, high-fidelity foundation for our advanced character animation algorithms and tools. Through our close collaboration, we will help game developers bring fully interactive and believable characters to a wide range of games."
It's two great tastes that taste real together! Hit the jump for more details on the partnership between physics powerhouses.
NaturalMotion and NVIDIA Bring a New Level of Realism to Games
Companies Team Up to Integrate Animation, AI and Physics Technologies
SANTA CLARA, CA and OXFORD, U.K. - June 11, 2008 NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, and NaturalMotion Ltd., the developers behind the highly acclaimed euphoria motion synthesis technology, today announced that the companies have teamed up to offer game developers and publishers easy-to-use, highly integrated solutions for adding animation and physics in next-generation games.
Starting with the upcoming release of NaturalMotion's morpheme animation engine, NVIDIA's PhysX technology will provide rigid body dynamics functionality across its product portfolio, supporting both console (PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii) and PC platforms. In addition, PC titles will benefit from GeForce GPU acceleration for both PhysX and future versions of morpheme, bringing additional motion fidelity to the PC game experience.
"We're deeply impressed by NVIDIA's commitment to push physics to new levels of fidelity and performance, and their investment in development and support infrastructure across all platforms," said Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. "NVIDIA's PhysX technology provides a robust, high-fidelity foundation for our advanced character animation algorithms and tools. Through our close collaboration, we will help game developers bring fully interactive and believable characters to a wide range of games."
"The introduction of NaturalMotion's AI and Adaptive Behaviours is the next big breakthrough in gaming," said Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA. "This technology takes us into a new level of immersion as characters roll, jump, duck and react to the players' actions and the environments around them. We are delighted to be working with NaturalMotion to bring this new level of character animation to the world."
For more information, visit www.naturalmotion.com.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Peter-Moore
Posted 8:03 AM 12/6/08
rinerdar, havok didn't play ball with Nvidiorg, they went and had a one night stand with Intel... all the while Nvidiorg was taking naturalmotion out to dinner and gently caressing its back.
resistance is futile
if you look at Havoks business plan its states the following;
1. show people Half Life 2
2. remind them your software sorts out the gravity gun
3= PORTAL
Peter-Moore
Lazlo
Posted 7:53 AM 12/6/08
@Grumps:
I thought LucasArts was making BackBreaker? I might be way off, but that's what instantly jumped out in my mind.
It's funny that this atricle popped up today cause I just posted this about what I would like to see most in video games. [kotaku.com]
Lazlo
wild homes 5: treyarch attacks!
Posted 7:51 AM 12/6/08
@rinerdar: It means Havok better step up their game. And, praying Intel doesn't lose that whole antitrust thing wouldn't hurt. Because that's likely to sting the old sugar daddy's pocketbooks.
wild homes 5: treyarch attacks!
Grumps
Posted 7:44 AM 12/6/08
So they made euphoria and now have a new engine coming out? cool, any vids? I'll go looking. And are they making the game backbreaker?
Grumps
Nirolak
Posted 7:42 AM 12/6/08
@rinerdar: They're owned by Intel now so I'm pretty sure they'll be alright. But hey, vastly increasing competition in physics engines can only end well.
Nirolak
rinerdar
Posted 7:38 AM 12/6/08
What does this mean for Havok?
rinerdar
Juthan
Posted 7:35 AM 12/6/08
NaturalMotion is what the ladies used to call me long ago when I was younger. Now they call my LocoMotion because I am slow to get started but fast to finish.
Take my wife...please! *ba-dum-dum-ching*
I'll be here all night, folks! Try the veal!
Juthan
IrNoThnk
Posted 7:34 AM 12/6/08
Almost out of the uncanny valley *cheer*
IrNoThnk
Foxdie
Posted 8:30 AM 12/6/08
@Datheron: Not all of us want to sound like mindless tools regurgitating lame internet memes. =p
Foxdie
Datheron
Posted 8:14 AM 12/6/08
@Peter-Moore: You forgot the internets prerequisites:
4. ?
5. PROFIT
Datheron
m1lkb0ne
Posted 8:53 AM 12/6/08
Havok's by no means dead. Pain is basically a demo for the Havok physics engine.
The interesting thing about this announcement is that morpheme may be benefitting from a PhysX hardware assist. Dell and Sager are packageing that hardware on their gaming laptops.
If Havok could strike a deal with Nvidia to write code to that hardware, it could be a real plus for them. Though it would cost them $$$ in royalties.
But stranger things have happened: Sony settled with Immersion, and suddenly rumble wasn't last gen anymore.
m1lkb0ne
udiie
Posted 9:28 AM 12/6/08
@Juthan: HAAHAHHAHHAHAHAHA.....
udiie
JUFONUK
Posted 10:07 AM 12/6/08
who cares, they will only ruin it by using it as the basis of all games with the attitude, fuck gameplay just make stuff get destroyed in a realistic way, ho hum
JUFONUK
heintzer
Posted 10:02 AM 12/6/08
@m1lkb0ne: Actually, any PCs with G80 chips and on have hardware-accelerated PhysX support built-in thanks to CUDA, NVIDIA's second computational mode for GPU hardware. :tmyk:
heintzer
CCCombobreaker
Posted 9:53 AM 12/6/08
Well ill say this. Im glad nvidia has physx now. Maybe some games will actually use it in the future. Im also excited to see this natural motion stuff.
CCCombobreaker
salmonax
Posted 10:30 AM 12/6/08
sounds cool, but this partnership was not responsible for Half-Life 2. and to Wild Homes 5: "Loveless" is an awesome album.
salmonax
JUFONUK
Posted 10:23 AM 12/6/08
@JUFONUK: no meaing to sound liek a typical geek, but i hate it when they over use a feature to sacrifice gameplay. goldeneye never had any fancy physics but made do with a solid engine and great gameplay, if they remade it and used the naturalmotion engine to re do it, then it would rock!!
JUFONUK
m1lkb0ne
Posted 10:38 AM 12/6/08
@heintzer: Both physics and graphics calculations often involve similar operations (e.g., inner and outer vector products), which is why it makes sense to perform them on a GPU rather than a CPU. You're right: Nvidia supports this via the PhysX SDK.
But a dedicated physics processor (PPU) can off-load the computational burden from the GPU, resulting in better performance if the set-up and communications overhead is not prohibitive.
As I understand it, the PS3 has software PhysX support, as well. I don't know the details of how it's architected, but I'd guess the PhysX calculations are done in one of the SPE's, since they're essentially DSPs (vector processors), rather than in the RSX (the PS3's GPU).
m1lkb0ne
fuchikoma
Posted 11:17 AM 12/6/08
Awwww yeah. Since GTA4 I have been totally impressed with Euphoria. We really haven't seen the half of it IMO - Euphoria provides some basic reflexes and actions that you could take for granted, and R* provided the brains, meaning dumb GTA pedestrians with very lifelike movement. This could be used for so much more, and I think it's already well above the rest.
PhysX... never really liked it much or cared to be honest... for my taste, Havok is not realistic, but is is very fun in a lot of games I've liked, where PhysX I don't really notice until I go to uninstall the game and go "oh, the PhysX driver worked its way onto my system again. Damn."
fuchikoma
HTTenrai
Posted 11:52 AM 12/6/08
All I have to say is this:
OMG DREAM COME TRUE!!!
HTTenrai
Terrorsaur.
Posted 11:44 AM 12/6/08
@m1lkb0ne:
Wow. Someone who knows what theyre talking about.
Sucks that I dont understand all of what you said though. May I ask what your career/major is?
Terrorsaur.
Terrorsaur.
Posted 11:43 AM 12/6/08
Euphoria proved an impressive and stunning engine. I mean being able to bump into people without them simply ragdolling (check half life 2 mods, such as...uhh I htink it was might and magic?) was awesome. Basically, fully interactive NPCs, keyterm FULLY. I was wondering when NVidia was going to start making use of their purchase of PHysX. Cant wait. I better start saving now.
Terrorsaur.
m1lkb0ne
Posted 12:10 PM 12/6/08
@Terrorsaur.: I did a dual-major in physics (quantum optics [lasers]) and applied math (functional analysis).
m1lkb0ne
Asfad
Posted 12:03 PM 12/6/08
This could be an interesting development with the release of CUDA enabled Nvidia drivers in the near future. Physx support through CUDA will let any 8 series or higher card run hardware accelerated physics without the separate Physx card. NaturalMotion's tech with CUDA support could offload AI and animation onto the graphics card. Can't wait to see the AI improvements this could bring
Asfad
WolvenOne
Posted 3:07 PM 12/6/08
CUDA being able to handle all these things may not have a huge impact immediately, but by the time the PS4 rolls around it will. If you can offset stuff like physics and whatnot onto the GPU, it leaves the CPU free to do things like Procedural Generation and Raytracing.
WolvenOne
WolvenOne
Posted 3:30 PM 12/6/08
Okay, suppose I should elaborate. Because these technologies only REALLY help out people with NVidia hardware, I don't think they'll see much utilization on PC's. However if these technologies are made available on consoles then you will see them used pretty heavily.
Any exclusive console title is going to optimize itself to the hardware quite a bit. So in those cases utilizing semi-proprietary technologies makes quite a bit of sense.
WolvenOne
vichnaiev
Posted 10:37 PM 12/6/08
I really don't understand the whole "transiction physics calculations to GPU" thing. GPUs are the current bottleneck of games, so moving MORE stuff there isn't kind of STUPID ??? Get the GPU to deal exclusively with graphics and start getting games multi-threaded instead. We've got 4 CPU cores and no games are using them, but there isn't a GPU that can run Crysis smoothly.
vichnaiev