NaturalMotion, NVIDIA team up for integrated physics, animation solutions

Hot in the industry today is news that two technological companies have joined forces to package both animations and physics to developer companies. NaturalMotion, responsible for the motion synthesis technology in Grand Theft Auto IV, announced together with NVIDIA, new proud owners of PhysX technology, that they will offer “highly-integrated” solutions for developing games on all current generation gaming platforms, including the PC. Find out how at the full story.

We hear from official press streams that NaturalMotion and NVIDIA have decided to pull their resources together to provide an integrated way for developers to create games with fluid animation and simulated physics. The team up appears to be a collaboration between NaturalMotion’s morpheme engine and the PhysX physics acceleration technology that NVIDIA acquired previously.

Currently, the plan is that the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii games can be enhanced by developer kits with support for both morpheme and PhysX, while PCs with GeForce 8 graphics cards will be able to immediately integrate PhysX technology, in addition to the GPU as CPU support as soon as driver support arrives. Games on the platform will also receive future morpheme support even as technology races onwards.

NVIDIA’s Roy Taylor, vice president of Content Relations, said that the launch of NaturalMotion’s AI and Adaptive Behaviors will soon be a huge breakthrough in gaming. This feature is hidden in the Dynamic Motion Synthesis technology that debuted on Grand Theft Auto IV, but has yet to see an official technology launch.

LucasArts‘ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which will release on multiple consoles, might be NaturalMotion’s golden ticket, however – the game features most of its animation and physics features, even on Wii.

Whatever this technological alliance can do for future games, we’ll only be able to witness once the new games start rolling in. More on that as we get them.