TotalPlayStation Interviews NaturalMotion's Torsten Reil

[fitbabits]

Our buddies over at TotalPlayStation (http://www.totalplaystation.com/) have posted an interview with NaturalMotion's Torsten Reil, where the potential of Dynamic Motion Synthesis is discussed.

Just what is Dynamic Motion Synthesis? Read the full interview and find out! (http://ps3.totalplaystation.com/features.php?id=4).

TPS: Let's get right into it, then: what are endorphin and euphoria, and what are the differences? We're still trying to wrap our head around the idea of characters more or less animating themselves based purely on a set of pre-determined behaviors. Or is that not quite the idea?

TR: You’re right – the characters essentially animate themselves, based on AI behaviours driving muscles in a physically simulated body. Think of it as robot control theory, only without looking robotic!

TPS: What kind of overhead does adding euphoria into a game's engine add? Is it a case of being able to offload the workload onto the PlayStation 3's SPEs, or is it something that needs to be more tightly integrated into the core game engine?

TR: The overhead is pretty low, as the AI behaviours are very fast. The most important thing is that the physics engine is optimized for next-gen consoles, which is now the case with all commercial offerings.
A great interview and a very promising technology. Kudos to Sam at Total PlayStation for the interview.

[fitbabits]

Damn, I just re-read the interview and my eye caught this:

TR: Imagine a football game where all the tackles are truly interactive and unique. Every time you tackle your buddy and see a slo-mo of it you know “that was my tackle”, and not just a played-back animation. Or imagine a fighting scene, where you hit your opponent, he stumbles back, maybe into another character; they trip over a chair, but just regain their balance, only to come and charge back at you together. And imagine knowing that none of this was scripted, but happened there and then because of the way you played the game.
I can think of several sports games that could benefit hugely from this sort of technology. No more 'skating' animations for football and basketball games, for example.

[Khash]

Good stuff. If it's half as good as they say it is, I bet it will be used in all kinds of games.

[fitbabits]

Good stuff. If it's half as good as they say it is, I bet it will be used in all kinds of games.
Yep, it certainly has potential. If it's implemented at all, I hope it's done in a way that enhances the gaming experience and doesn't detract from it.

[Khash]

I could be wrong but I believe at GDC or something they showed a demo using euphoria in a zombie game. They had several zombies running up and tackling humans as they tried to get away. It looked very brutal. Sometimes the zombies would just grab their feet. Other times two zombies would double-team their prey. It all looked very nice. It was that game where you play as the zombie overlord and you control other zombies to attack people.

[fitbabits]

I could be wrong but I believe at GDC or something they showed a demo using euphoria in a zombie game. They had several zombies running up and tackling humans as they tried to get away. It looked very brutal. Sometimes the zombies would just grab their feet. Other times two zombies would double-team their prey. It all looked very nice. It was that game where you play as the zombie overlord and you control other zombies to attack people.
I'd love to see a link to that, if possible. Sounds fantastic.

[Khash]

I'm racking my brain trying to remember the title. It was one of the first next-gen games shown. Surely someone here knows what game i'm talking about :p

[Returner]

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

[SamBishop]

I could be wrong but I believe at GDC or something they showed a demo using euphoria in a zombie game. They had several zombies running up and tackling humans as they tried to get away. It looked very brutal. Sometimes the zombies would just grab their feet. Other times two zombies would double-team their prey. It all looked very nice. It was that game where you play as the zombie overlord and you control other zombies to attack people.

You're absolutely right. That was footage from Possession (http://ps3.totalplaystation.com/games.php?id=43) (yes, that's a shameless self-plug), which is being done by Blitz Games and Volitile Games. I don't think they have a publisher yet, but they're using euphoria to simulate a bunch of different kinds of attacks. IGN has a demo reel (http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/706/706274/vids_1.html) if you want to check it out. Properly implemented, this stuff could be really cool for games.

[Varsity]

Come on Valve...you know you want to.

[disc]

We used a bit of endorphin to simulate certain animations, it's really good but it was mostly just ragdolls and physics. They had a good program for it though and I would love to check out their tools for euphoria.

(I'm working on the dynamic mixture between physics and animations myself but it is damned hard to get the time to do it properly while you have to do your real work as well... they have it good all these middleware developers, can spend time researching stuff properly and then sell it on)

[SamBishop]

Sorry for resurrecting a semi-dead thread, but disc, where you do you work? I'm curious what kind of real-world implementation NaturalMotion's stuff has gotten. The NM guys will list clients, of course, but not projects.