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.

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We're all big fans of NaturalMotion's Euphoria animation system. Replacing canned animation with real-time model "simulation" is a huge step for games, both in terms of graphics but even more importantly in terms of gameplay, since with Euphoria no two attacks or moves will ever end the same way. The tech will feature in stuff like SW Force: Unleashed, Indiana Jones and Backbreaker, but we'll get our first real good look at it when GTAIV hits in April. And nowhere will it be better displayed than when star Niko...gets his drink on and has to stumble his way home, drunk off his tits.

There is a drinking mini-game in very detailed form where you can get drunk and he can actually then stumble around and you have to get home. But all of that is fully simulated. So, it is not based on animation any more. It is actually all synthesized on the CPU. Which means that it has a completely different outcome every time you play.

Realism schmlerism. Real-life drinking always has the same outcome. Least for me it does. Tears, hangover, fry-up breakfast. Wash, rinse, repeat. Simulate that, NaturalMotion.
Putting Tech in Motion [GI.biz] [Pic]

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NaturalMotion is currently working on a new next-gen football game called Backbreaker for next year. One of the features of the game will be the ability to assign your own colors, logos and names to your team's players. So, to show off the feature, the folks at NM threw together a little Kotaku team featuring our signature pink and green colours and our own Crecente as Quarterback. I don't know what's funnier, the pink uniforms or the thought of anyone on the Kotaku team (with the possible exception of Fahey and Luke) playing football.

Why would anyone try to take on the next-generation console football genre up against EA's Madden series when even their biggest competitor has fallen? Watch the video. NaturalMotion is the company behind the euphoria Animation System used in GTA IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and they're taking that animation system and applying it to the gridiron.

"Backbreaker is the first football game with truly interactive tackles. By utilising our motion synthesis engine, euphoria, players will never make the same tackle twice, giving them an intensely unique experience every time they play the game," said NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil. "Backbreaker puts players in the middle of the gridiron by providing a pure, realistic football experience only possible on next-generation consoles."

If the game ends up anything like that video, NaturalMotion could give EA a run for its money in 2008. Wow. Just wow.

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