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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.”
Electronic Theatre very much respects Kaos Studios’ work on
the aforementioned Frontlines: Fuel of War and will be sure
to bring you more on their project as soon as we have the details. | 
