BUILD | TOOLS NEWS Moving Forward
Middleware outfit and game developer NaturalMotion has released the latest version of its animation engine morpheme. Will Freeman asks CTO Simon Mack what makes a ‘dot’ update so significant
NaturalMotion’s chief technology officer Simon Mack believes the new changes to morpheme can help both triple-A and mobile devs
What makes morpheme’s 3.5 update especially significant, considering that it is in effect a ‘dot’ release? Simon Mack, CTO: I guess we’re a little conservative with our version numbers. Morpheme 3.5 has been a major project for us, and introduces features that will make a big difference to our customers. We’ve introduced runtime retargeting and
rescaling, which can provide substantial savings in production costs and memory usage for many developers. There have also been some very significant runtime performance optimisations, and for the first time we are supporting morpheme on iOS and Android devices.
How are the updates to a response to a changing development sector? Our core market for morpheme has traditionally been triple-A console developers. As we’re now a long way into the console cycle, these studios are really pushing the hardware so we’ve had to optimise the runtime even further to support them in this. However, we’re also seeing an increasing number of smaller studios, especially in Asia, who are less familiar with 3D character animation, but who want triple-A quality.
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This has led us to streamline and simplify
many of our workflows and have our tools offer more assistance in setting up characters and animation networks. Many of these studios are also looking to reduce the number of assets they need to produce, which really drove us to focus on the runtime retargeting features.
We’ve seen a new set of platforms,
including Vita and mobile devices, capable of high- end 3D experiences, and developers are keen to exploit this.
Simon Mack, NaturalMotion The other important change that has
recently occurred has been the transition to mobile platforms. Developers are starting to push for better quality visuals on iOS and Android, and it will be interesting to see how the market for middleware on these platforms develops.
Runtime retargeting is perhaps the most significant addition to morpheme 3.5. Why is this significant, and how will it change things for developers ‘in the field’? Runtime retargeting allows animations created for one character to be applied to another at runtime. This means that you don’t need to create and store different animations for each character in your game. The benefits of this are pretty substantial. Animation production costs can be reduced as time doesn’t have to be spent creating new animations or retargeting offline. Just as important, though, is that fewer animation clips have to be stored on disk and loaded at runtime. For games where download size is critical, or on platforms with tough memory limitations, this can make a big difference. Of course, we always want to make sure
developers have complete flexibility in how they work. Morpheme’s node-based approach means that it’s trivial to mix retargeted, shared animation and character- specific motions in one animation network.
How has 3.5 repositioned morpheme as a tool for new platforms and technologies? It’s always been important for us to support new platforms. If people are making games that need high-quality character animation,
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