Next-Generation Animation Technology

[cliffbo]

March 13, 2006 - NaturalMotion Ltd. announced today their run-time animation technology, euphoria, which will be used for development in AAA next-generation games on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Though precisely which games have yet to be revealed, the euphoria engine promises to be a step forward for character animations. Using euphoria, developers can escape the need to pre-program character reactions. Instead, the engine will take into account multiple variables like physics and degree of force to determine how an in-game model should react, making for distinctive results every time.

"euphoria enables a whole new level of interactivity and realism during game play," says Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. "Every time euphoria synthesizes what happens on the screen you know that no player has seen it before. It makes every game your unique experience. Every football tackle is your tackle. Every haymaker is your haymaker. It's not canned animation data, it's you. These unique game moments are what next-generation games are all about."

Based on NaturalMotion's Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) technology, euphoria allows for A.I. to act as though they possess a central nervous system. In addition to producing more realistic animations, this technology is also purported to reduce development time because of its autonomous calculations. We'll have to wait for further announcements and information regarding which specific titles are using the technology, and to what ends.

Origins

Dynamic Motion Synthesis is originally based on Oxford University's research on the control of human and animal body motions.

The example shown below is of a simple biped which learns how to walk using artificial evolution.

The process starts with random walkers, none of which can walk properly. The best ones (those that make at least one step without falling over) are allowed to produce offspring, which are again selected according to how far they walk. This selection is repeated over a number of generations. At the end of process the biped can walk without falling over.

NaturalMotion's Dynamic Motion Synthesis technology has moved beyond this original research, but the basic principle remains: interactive 3D characters through AI controlling muscles in a simulated body.


http://ps3.ign.com/articles/695/695426p1.html
demos:
http://www.naturalmotion.com/pages/demos.htm

[Coded-Dude]

indeed, nice find, good read
(you gets teh rep)

[Epix]

WOW! I went to their website and watched the demo of their software and I wasd VERY impressed. The tackling animations were AWESOME! The demos at the top of the page are the most recent.


http://www.naturalmotion.com/pages/demos.htm

That's the link to the demos of these guy's animation technology.

[cliffbo]

WOW! I went to their website and watched the demo of their software and I wasd VERY impressed. The tackling animations were AWESOME! The demos at the top of the page are the most recent.


http://www.naturalmotion.com/pages/demos.htm

That's the link to the demos of these guy's animation technology.

you!!!!!!! just copied this and pasted it!!!!!! lol

[Old_Timer!]

Actually this tech is already in use in Tekken 5, from what I remember.

[frosty]

Yeah, saw these demos months ago.

[Gegenki]

Yea I saw it maybe a year to 3 years ago, along with soem videos of tekken 5, but tekken 5 doesn't look as impressive. I want to see stuff like this in games. No more of me about to punch you then all of a sudden, i get jabbed and my cahracter moves to a set animation frame

[Z]

I don't know if this is the same program, but the one they are using for Posession looks interesting. they don't have to actually make the entire motion. for example, you push a character down the stairs. he will fall accordingly without having been given previous animation instruction on 'how' to fall down stairs.

[cliffbo]

z take a look at the animations above.

[CreativeWriter]

This is all impressive tech. Makes me want to learn how to use it and make stuff, though that would take years I'm sure.

[Gegenki]

You can make years months provided you have time

This implies, that your character, could be animated to run down stairs, but if a section of the wall was blown out by the chasing enemy with his rocket launcher, you could completely unexpectedly trip and roll down. The problem with this is what happens to the system when you roll into a pile of rubble. Does it enter and endless loop? Or will it be able to handle it. hmmm

[liver_kick]

I don't know if this is the same program, but the one they are using for Posession looks interesting.

Posession is using Endorphin's Natural Motion, which is something different entirely. Tekken and some other games used it as well. Basically its like mo-cap without having to deal with live actors and equipment. You generate the pre-canned animations within the software like you would any mo-cap studio and apply them to your game.

Endorphin's Euphoria takes the same concepts of Natural Motion but caculates everything in a variable, real time environment with physics sim and AI systems. This is seriously exciting stuff, but I wonder how computationally intensive and viable it might be. The tradeoffs that were made in the design of these next gen CPUs (Cell and Xcpu) were in part to maximize floating point performance, and tools like this may put that to the test.

[Z]

thanks for clearing things out liver_kick. :)

[Saibo]

This is all impressive tech. Makes me want to learn how to use it and make stuff, though that would take years I'm sure.

Theres a demo of it on their site, it'll probably take a couples months to learn..not years ; )

A press release of a new product, yet no videos related to it? boring...