NaturalMotion Debuts Morpheme 3

Major New Version of Leading Animation Middleware Engine Saves Even More Time and Resources While Creating a New Level of Character Animation Quality for AAA Games; Adds Full Support for Kinect and Move

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – December 14, 2010 – NaturalMotion, a leading game technology and development company, today announced Morpheme 3.0, a major new version of its industry-leading animation middleware for creating high quality, believable characters that greatly streamlines the process of authoring rich character animations while adding full support for Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move controller technologies.  The new version, which is available now, builds on Morpheme’s strong foundations with further improved performance, memory usage, workflow and debugging facilities.

“Morpheme 3.0 is a great leap making the task of creating rich, natural character animation for AAA games simpler, faster, and easier than ever before,” said Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. “Morpheme 3.0 puts unprecedented control in the hands of both animators and programmers, allowing believable character performances to be quickly created and tested, and then executed in-game with the incredible efficiency.”

Designed to give developers and animators unprecedented creative control, Morpheme 3.0 saves time and resources with improved real-time, graphical authoring and previewing of in-game animation. Available for PlayStation^®3, Xbox 360^®, Wii™ and PC, Morpheme is licensed by major developers and publishers in the games industry including Ubisoft, Disney, Codemasters, THQ, CCP, Bioware, Robomodo, and many others.

With Morpheme 3.0, animators and programmers will benefit from new Active State Transitions and Self Transitions, speeding the task of creating responsive characters while making it easier to understand. New enhancements to the preview facility allow for easy prototyping and testing of interaction between multiple characters, while the new asset management system efficiently organizes animation clips and speeds up the building of physical characters.

Programmers can easily customize Morpheme 3.0 with the new Node Wizard while gaining unprecedented insight into runtime execution via all-new deep debugging visualization within Connect. In addition, substantial reductions in runtime memory usage make it easy to work with the large asset libraries of AAA games.

With Morpheme 3.0, users can also optionally add full support for Microsoft Kinect  and PlayStation Move. Specific Kinect nodes filter and retarget data directly onto game character rigs, or simply allow players to control characters indirectly with gestures.

For more information on NaturalMotion and Morpheme 3.0, visit www.naturalmotion.com.

About NaturalMotion

NaturalMotion is a leading game technology and development company based in Oxford (England) and San Francisco (California). The company’s award-winning Euphoria engine is a break-through in real-time character animation and is used in AAA titles such as Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, and LucasArts’ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. NaturalMotion’s other run-time animation product, Morpheme, is the industry’s first graphically authorable animation engine. NaturalMotion Games, the company’s publishing arm, is a digital publisher of high-end, accessible games such as the hit Backbreaker for connected new platforms, combining advanced technology and graphics with accessible, social gameplay. For more information on NaturalMotion, visit www.naturalmotion.com.

# # #

All trademarks are property of their respective owners.