Posted on Thursday 15 February 2007
Here’s something I hadn’t previously seen: a demo from GDC 2006 showing off Lucas Arts’ new game technologies. Shown in this video is a material properties system dubbed DMM (Digital Molecular Matter) that’s very impressive. Imagine being able to not just export a CAD mesh and load it into a videogame, but provide its mass properties as well.
Only reason I found that video was because people are talking about what I assume is a new Euphoria video showcasing more of the biomechanical AI shown above. If you want to watch it, head over to YouTube for the Star Wars: Force Unleashed video that showcases it – Link.
PLM and Euphoria
I first mentioned the Euphoria technology last year (reLink). The recent video I posted (reLink) reminded me of it, so I decided to go looking for more and found what appears to be an early tech demo for “Endorphin”, the code that may ha…
We we’re pretty blown away by this as well. There’s another demo using stormtroopers and rafters demonstrating something similar. The really exciting part here is all the animations are procedural rather than keyframed… that’s gonna signifigantly cut production costs! Facinating stuff.
-Travis Savo
CEO, Verse Studios
web: http://www.verse-studios.com
email: tsavo@verse-studios.com
blog: http://inverse.verse-studios.com
If I wasn’t on a real product design kick right now, I would most definitely have written more about the animation/character behavior system shown in that second video. It is amazing.
[...] Over at Rebang there is a post and video of some of the work Lucasarts are doing with their Kinematic and situationally aware character engines. For those of us who are software engineers, gamers and a little bit artistic we appreciate the depth of work that goes into producing systems like this. Recently we have had several conversation relating to the lack of this sort of physics modelling in Second Life. Many of the more techie of us are busy building little skeletons and physics models that in normal game engines would be part of the middleware. Now there is some element of intellectual challenge and coding and design art to this. However if we had the middleware for better simulations and physics modelling we could then spend the time on the valuable applications. One example is a slow burn sideline project sparked by some of my collegues. One of being able to use sign language in Second Life. The basic avatar is not equipped to deal with the subtle movements required. So I have started to build some hands. Of course this then has led to having to start to build a joint structure. Anyone who has used poser of avmitor will know how usefull if is to be able to just position arms and legs allowing for the actual joints, aka kinematics The hands also can have another use, for those of you who remember kenny everett’s TV shows [...]
Oh yeah we did this in Second Life during beta. No wait, that was something else! xD
All kidding aside, wow, just beautiful. I’d love to see haptic input devices and that technology combined… makes that surgery game I got on the Wii a bit more cool + creepy at the same time.
Surgical games. Hadn’t even thought of those. Haptics, a scalpel and some virtual human body parts. Welcome to Hannibal Lector’s Halo. Gibs will never be the same.
Quest for Fame
IBM had a game way back and I was reminded of if recently.
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