NaturalMotion Explains Physics In Video Games
December 29, 2010 10:00 AM | Eric Caoili
Picnic Films, which produces short documentaries and educational/corporate films, recently posted this video that takes viewers to NaturalMotion's Oxford office and introduces them to how knowledge and manipulation of physics, gravity, and momentum play into video game development.
NaturalMotion's Euphoria software for animating 3D characters is used in a number of popular titles, like Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, and you can see it in action here to show how physics plays into Back Breaker -- there's a fun bit that shows what playing football on the moon might look like, too.
According to Picnic Films, NaturalMotion's CEO Torsten Reil agreed to take part in this film because he was "fed up with young graduates applying to his company for jobs with the wrong qualifications" and wanted to stress that programmers "need a degree in maths or physics" to work in the gaming industry.
Or, as mentioned earlier, $0.99 should be enough to get you started.
Categories:
2 Comments
It's so weird to see this
"Yeah, so, we've spent years of people's lives and millions of dollars. We've peered into the merest and the deepest of the physical rules governing our universe. We've simulated them in minute and colourful detail, creating systems with shocking scope and hilarious implications, things a person could be entertained and intrigued by all their lives"
'Wow! So I guess you just need to design some interesting levels that'll explore those implications and you'll have a wonderful game on your hands!'
"What? No, it just forms one part of the animation system on our by-the-numbers football game simulator with exactly the same faux challenges and token depth that we've been churning out for the last twenty years. These graphics are going to be AWESOME!"
Hamish | December 29, 2010 1:42 PM
That's rather unfair Hamish. These aren't game developers but a third party middleware company. I'll agree that the pursuit of realism might be a misguided goal, but until we reach it, or close enough to be negligible, than we will continue to aim for it. Perhaps, we will never have the flourishing of different more abstracted styles painting had.
And to say it has no effect on gameplay is just willfully ignorant! Even this specific technology has been used in great games such as GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption and in fact the way Nico, and the npcs would dynamically react to forces (such as your car ramming them) was a large part of the pleasure in that game.
Paul McGee | January 1, 2011 1:49 PM