Kaydara Announces Middleware Solutions for Game Developers

Kaydara Inc. announced its first middleware solution for game developers, HumanIK | Middleware, a character animation and rigging technology. With HumanIK | Middleware, game developers will now be able to easily embed the same award-winning character animation technology found in MOTIONBUILDER directly into their game engine. This middleware technology will provide game developers with greater flexibility, higher quality animation, and improve productivity - allowing them to have the same character behavior in both their animation tool and their run-time engine.



HumanIK | Middleware is a small footprint library with solving fast enough to run on today's games consoles and PCs, but designed to evolve with next-generation platforms. Key benefits to HumanIK | Middleware include:

Flexible Character Definition: Biped/Quadruped template allows for any character to be defined in a unified way, independent of bone structure (from 18 to 178 bones including fingers, toes, multiple bones spine, etc.).



Animation Reusability: Motion banks provide you with the ability to reuse your animation on different characters, independently from skeletal structure, size and shape.



Improved Animation Quality: Full control over IK (full body or individual body parts) with over 100 animation parameters that can be adjusted in real time. This improves interaction between multiple characters and the character's ability to grab props, and eliminates feet sliding.



Increased Productivity: With the ability to pre-visualize character behavior right inside of MOTIONBUILDER, what users see in their animation tool is what is seen in the game. This also allows users to easily adjust characters during the game development process without destroying any animation previously created.



Pricing and Availability

HumanIK | Middleware will be available in the second quarter of 2004.