GTA IV To Use NaturalMotion's euphoria Engine?

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

GTA IV To Use NaturalMotion's euphoria Engine?

Posted at 19:34 GMT by Chris :: Category: GTA IV :: Comments: 34

The news comes after it was announced that Rockstar Games became the second licensee to utilise NaturalMotion's euphoria technology. A short excerpt from the press release spells out the facts:

Oxford, UK-Feb 27 2007- NaturalMotion today announced a partnership with Rockstar Games, Inc., the world-renowned publishing label, to integrate NaturalMotion's revolutionary euphoria engine into upcoming next-generation Rockstar Games titles. Rockstar's integration of euphoria is well advanced, with today's announcement following several months of close collaboration between the two companies.

Announcements regarding specific titles will follow at a later date.

It's important to note that as of yet no specific titles have been confirmed, though it appears we'll be getting seperate announcements on those in the near future. Whether or not "several months" of collaboration is enough for Rockstar to have been using this, after all there are only 10 months until the release of the game, it should be very interesting to see this technology used. This paragraph of text should help to explain why this is quite exciting news:

Based on NaturalMotion's DMS technology, euphoria uses the processing power of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to simulate the human body and motor nervous system, thus creating fully interactive game characters that act differently every time. With euphoria, games move away from canned animation, towards a much richer, life-like experience that is unique to the player.

So essentially, you shouldn't see the same movements twice from characters, it will always be different just like in real life. It would certainly make for some very interesting game experiences. We may also see this technology used in some of Rockstar's other upcoming games such as LA Noire.

Links:
NaturalMotion
Press Release (pdf)

Comments: - View/Post Comments (You need to register or login to your existing account before you post)

Comment by pyr0man1ac on 28/02/07 10:26:

Wow... this is going to be amazing if they use this in the game. I can't wait!

Comment by Wu-Zi-Mu on 28/02/07 10:43:

YES.... This means the game will be the best thing ever IMO, Thank you Chris for this news update

Comment by 2003 on 28/02/07 10:53:

Nice graphics.

Comment by CroScorpion on 28/02/07 10:54:

Thank you Chris in one way in another now I can't sleep, man. I can't wait, when is beta version out

Comment by Gycu on 28/02/07 12:58:

Great news.I already posted this info yesterday on another GTA4 topic but only 1 person read-it.What it means that the player movement will always different?

Comment by Gycu on 28/02/07 13:13:

Sorry 4 duoble posting.I just foun what this Natural Motion can do.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hdImUIhbG9E

I think it`s good,infact it`s damn amazing!!!.Check`it out ,it`s a must see video if you want to compare it with GTA4.

Comment by Adriaan on 28/02/07 15:41:

QUOTE(Chris @ Feb 27 2007, 09:34 PM)

While we were all thinking that Rockstar were using their in-house RAGE technology in GTA4, it turns out this may not be the case after all.

euphoria is not a game engine in one, it's basically just an add-on or plugin, like Alias' Motion Builder.

Comment by CroScorpion on 28/02/07 16:15:

Plugin in or not it's still greate.

I'm not sure is this real game screenshot but if GTA 4 gona look like this I can't say nothing anymore.
Gta 4

And its look like GTA 4 will be in London

Comment by Chris on 28/02/07 16:26:

QUOTE(Gycu @ Feb 28 2007, 01:13 PM)

Well that's showing off endorphin, which is a different product, though I'd imagine they're using the same engine anyway, so it's a nice demonstration.

QUOTE(CroScorpion @ Feb 28 2007, 04:15 PM)

Plugin in or not it's still greate.

I'm not sure is this real game screenshot but if GTA 4 gona look like this I can't say nothing anymore.
Gta 4

And its look like GTA 4 will be in London

You're not sure? Are you new to the whole GTA thing or something? Those are all fakes, some are even stolen from this site. It's not even a trailer it's just a slideshow of fake screens, and you fell for that? Wow.

Anyway yes this is great news, GTA4 is going to have some awe-inspiring graphics and physics by the looks of things.

Comment by Woozie on 28/02/07 17:38:

Thanks for the update Chris. Once again I'll say your the best person for gaming info. What would we do without Chris?!?!?!?!

Comment by CroScorpion on 28/02/07 18:05:

Listen to him, gta Players.

Comment by DareDevilX on 28/02/07 18:07:

Thanks Chris,amazing news really.It seems like GTA IV is gonna rock!

Comment by Tommy Montana on 28/02/07 18:17:

Yeah, GTA4 gonna be great, atleast for it's graphics ofcourse.

Comment by Ciaran on 28/02/07 18:43:

GTA:4 will be the best and great work on finding this, best info so far.

Comment by Original GTA Master on 28/02/07 22:24:

I saw this on PlanetGTA yesterday, but they got the news from someone else. Seems like pretty kick ass stuff. Rockstar might be going all out on GTAIV. Much like what they did when they went from topdown to 3D with GTAIII.

Comment by E.J. on 01/03/07 00:09:

A that endophorin shit is vicious. So every action of the character is going to be different. Damn, I can't wit for GTA IV to come. I'ma probably beat it in a week because I'm not gonna sleep.

Comment by tilly on 01/03/07 01:37:

OMG! are they really gunna use it?!?!? IVE been wishing for this forever!! you can see that i wrote like 200 posts on the wishlist about euphoria physics. You should see the freeroam running animation, it looks so real!

wow i just looked back at my posts, and it seems like what i sed was like telling the future! zomgzwtflol!

Comment by CroScorpion on 01/03/07 06:53:

Endophorin stuff will make game very less boring and game will give a lot more fun.

Comment by Jace on 01/03/07 09:47:

Little late on this, but this looks awesome.
This is about forcing me to buy a 360. I really don't want to wait a year untill I can finally play it.

QUOTE(2003 @ Feb 28 2007, 11:53 AM)

Nice graphics.

This doesn't have anything directly to do with graphics...

QUOTE(Gycu @ Feb 28 2007, 02:13 PM)

I don't think GTA IV will have it that good, somehow. But it looks great. And will require lot's of power to for PC's, that is if it ever get's a PC release.

Comment by Gycu on 01/03/07 13:32:

In case that you don`t know there is a GTA 4 System Requirements Topic that I start,so you can talk about that there.

http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/index.ph...=9821&st=60

GTA 4 using Natural motion will be 10 better than previous GTAs. in all motion aspects

But is only this that will make GTA IV better than GTA 3 ,just like GTA 3 was a revolution compared it with GTA 2,without the graphic improvements?

Comment by Jace on 01/03/07 14:21:

Must be fun if they use this for all the shooting stuff.
And it will be fun to throw someone down the stares to, you'l see them fall like a rag-doll

Comment by Chris on 01/03/07 14:30:

I know what you mean but don't confuse this with rag-doll physics, they are an actual type of physics, which are similar to what euphoria has done, except it's literally like a rag-doll, movements aren't human. Unless that human is dead of course.

Also to everyone who's talking about endorphin, that's a different product. Rockstar are using euphoria. Read more about the two different products on http://www.naturalmotion.com.

And all the comments regarding system specs have been moved to the topic in the GTA4 forum dedicated to it. Please do not talk about that here, Your comments on news posts are supposed to be directly related to the story. Thanks.

Comment by Gycu on 01/03/07 14:38:

That`s what I told them,to talk about system requirements .Yes my bad,Endorphin it`s not what GTA 4 will use,GTA 4 will use Euphoria.But are similar.

You mean like their posts about system specs were moved to my topic?

Comment by Chris on 01/03/07 14:44:

Yes their posts have been moved into your topic Gycu, mods and admins can move not only topics but individual posts too

Also, back on topic yet again, here are direct links to the endorphin and euphoria pages. Yes they are similar, and you may be confused as to what the actual differences are, but unless you're working in the 3D model or animation industry you don't need to know

The point is that the press release specifically states euphoria, rather than all or any other of the products made by NaturalMotion. Just to clear up any confusion.

Another point to make clear is that nowhere does it specifically state GTA4 will use it, but it is heavily implied, so that's what we're expecting.

Comment by Gycu on 01/03/07 14:51:

So wichone is best,Euphoria or Endorphin?Chris,anyone?

Comment by Chris on 01/03/07 15:06:

Well I'm not sure if you can which is "best", but I should have linked to the FAQ, there's an explanation of their products' differences:

Q: What is the difference between endorphin, euphoria and morpheme?
A: endorphin and euphoria are both based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS). This means they are capable of synthesising animation data in real-time. endorphin uses DMS to create canned (or baked) animation data (but much faster than key-framing or mocap). euphoria uses DMS to synthesise animation on-the fly on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Unlike endorphin and euphoria, morpheme is not based on DMS. Instead, it is an advanced animation engine and tool chain to drastically increase the quality of canned animation in-game. morpheme is, however, out-of-the-box prepared to slot in euphoria, and natively supports endorphin animation data.

If I'm understanding it correctly, endorphin creates animation data which characters can use during a game. While euphoria generates animations just when needed, the character movements aren't scripted as such, they are unique and not created before hand, like with endorphin. I'm not an animations expert though so I may be misinterpreting this myself, so don't take my word for it.

Does it really matter that you all know the specific differences though?

Comment by Gycu on 01/03/07 15:10:

So there are similar but also different

No it was just a question,just to caompare Euphoria with endorphin.BTW I`ve heard of another Natural Motion Engine,not just endorphin & euphoria.I think it`s false but I`ll try to search something on the net.

Comment by Chris on 01/03/07 15:12:

morpheme? It's on their site and mentioned in the quote from the FAQ I posted above. But that's completely different from the two other products, so let's stay away from that before everyone gets confused.

Comment by Gycu on 01/03/07 15:16:

Ok.I agree.So what you are saying is that they`ll use the RAGE engine combined with Euphoria(when it`s needed)?

Comment by Jace on 01/03/07 20:38:

Rage in the main game engine. And Euphoria is a type of plug-in to the game.

That is if I didn't misunderstand anything.

Comment by CroScorpion on 01/03/07 20:44:

New engine in GTA 4 would be very nice think for us. Maybe Unreal engine strongest engine today I think.

Comment by Jace on 01/03/07 21:18:

It has already been announced that it will use the Rage engine. That's the same one used for Table Tennis.

Comment by jonker93 on 02/03/07 22:07:

Those motion sensing vid lokked great

Comment by Jace on 02/03/07 22:36:

There was no motion sensing

Just natural movements that get auto created everytime.