The Kynogon announcement this week at GDC has got me excited – really excited:

Autodesk signs definitive agreement to acquire Kynogon, maker of Kynapse — the leading game AI middleware.

For those of you who are not familiar with Kynogon, they are a middleware developer responsible for Kynapse, an impressive A.I. run-time component used by an impressive array of games developers. What does this move by Autodesk signal? Well, my take on it is that this is a signal to the industry that Autodesk is serious about middleware and has its sights set on run-time. For years now, we have been seeing more and more success out of our HumanIK Middleware offering, which is being adopted by more and more developers for next-gen titles. See this piece on how UBIsoft used HumanIK Middleware (and of course, MotionBuilder) on the hugely successful Assassins Creed title:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=10303363&linkID=6761613


So what does this all mean for MotionBuilder? With the real-time engine within MotionBuilder being an ideal environment for run-time components, these types of components bring us one step closer to achieving a 1-1 relationship between authoring environment and run-time engine. HumanIK was the first step, and now we have a potential second. Very exciting times, cool things ahead!

More on this later on in the year. Right now we are focused on MotionBuilder “Next”, which is by far one of the most exciting releases we have worked on in years. Can’t give away too much, but themes like “real-time” are at the heart and soul of this one.


Cheers,

Curtis Garton