Red 5 adds Morpheme to pipeline

Red 5 Studios has integrated NaturalMotion’s Morpheme into the production pipeline for its new game.

The studio was formed in September 2005 by a team of key developers that worked on World of Warcraft. The team is currently working on a new, unannounced MMO.

Morpheme was added to the game’s pipeline so animators could have more control over the game’s final animation said Mark Kern, president and CEO of Red 5.

He explained: “In a lot of other systems, after the animators export their work, they don’t get to see how the animations interact until it is in the game. If they then need to tweak a transition between animations or states, they have to edit a text file and then run the game again, which usually tears at an animator’s soul. morpheme has an intuitive graphical interface that allows animators to go in and setup all these transitions and preview them without involving much programmer intervention. It cuts down on the time that a programmer and animator need to work together to get a system working within the game, and let’s the animator focus on what they were hired to do – animate.”

Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, added: “The team behind Red 5 Studios has one of the most impressive track records in MMOs, be it commercial, creative or technical. We are aware how important Red 5 Studio’s technology decisions are, and are proud they have chosen morpheme as their animation engine.”