Autodesk announced that it has licensed HumanIK middleware to EA for next-gen game development. HumanIK is a development library that enables game developers to create animated characters to interact more realistically with digital environments. It has been used, alongside Maya 3D and MotionBuilder, in EA’s Def Jam: Icon, FIFA Soccer 07 and NBA Street Homecourt.
“Through our partnership with Autodesk, we were able to achieve a new level of character animation in DEF JAM: ICON, FIFA Soccer 07 and NBA STREET Homecourt,” said Glenn Entis, EA’s chief visual and technical officer. “Part of the reason EA consistently delivers innovative hit game titles like these is because we rely on extensive internal and external R&D. Autodesk HumanIK middleware allowed efficient porting of game data to the various platforms on which we shipped our games. Autodesk R&D team was highly responsive, quickly providing us with customised builds of the HumanIK solution.”Built from the HumanIK character technology found in the Maya and MotionBuilder software, Autodesk HumanIK middleware provides an on-target intelligent inverse kinematics (IK) animation system. It lets game developers control the animation of a character’s body and limbs at run-time, resulting in a much higher level of realism in the game. Artists are empowered within the game authoring environment, as HumanIK delivers a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) workflow. This also reduces artists’ reliance on integration programmers, who typically port the game data into the game engine.
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