THQ licenses morpheme engine for upcoming games

THQ has licensed NaturalMotion's morpheme animation middleware for use on future projects, including an unannounced title by Kaos Studios - the developer behind Frontlines: Fuel of War.

"NaturalMotion's technology is invaluable to animators and developers, and the seamless integration of morpheme and PhysX helps to cut down production times and costs on these parts of the development process," said Roy Tessler, vice president of production worldwide at THQ.

"Kaos Studios chose morpheme as their character animation solution after an in-depth evaluation, and we are glad to be able to make this purchase part of a wider licensing deal across THQ."

Christian Staack, NaturalMotion's vice president of sales for North America, added: "Morpheme offers unprecedented control over run-time character animation. With version 2.0, its graphical authoring capabilities extend to physics, and character interactions with physical environments.

"THQ sees value in this powerful combination, and we will work closely with any of the publisher’s studios that take advantage of this deal."

To date morpheme has been licensed by developers and publishers such as BioWare, Eidos and Disney.