Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 09 December 2008 10:52
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 5
iTWire:And now you are working for Autodesk?
M-BH: “I’ve been using Autodesk products since High School, and that is incredibly frightening to think how long ago that was.”
iTWire: I won’t ask.
M-BH: “[Laughs] I used autoCAD at an architecture studio, I was thinking of becoming an architect, so, because I was computer savvy, they put me right in front of autoCAD.”
“[But I really believe in Autodesk products, some of the ones we do for the gaming industry are 3ds MAX, Maya, Motion Builder, Mudbox and we have game technology for human IK, HumanIK and Kynapse and we just formed a new game technology company this past summer.”
“So we are focusing more on the technological side, the more middleware side of games development, just this morning we closed Softimage, which is fantastic news for us, and I think is fantastic news for games developers as well, who will be able to add the XSI Mod tool, which is fantastic for those in High School or College who are thinking of getting into the industry, its a great tool to help take them along that path.”
iTWire: What about that integration with other tools such as physics or similar to give well rounded support for the entire process?
M-BH: “Yeah, one of the things we talked about traditionally at Autodesk before the formation of the game technology group is that it is the place to Create, Animate and Integrate your work into a game. Now we are adding the idea of how do animation, AI and physics work in concert to create much more believable characters?”
iTWire: So what comes out the other side is a more complete product?
M-BH: “Correct. And we are focussing right now on characters, and really believable characters.”
iTWire: Can you expand on that ideal; are we talking about human emotion etcetera?
M-BH: “No, we are not looking at game-play here, we are a fantastic tools company, a fantastic software company, but, really people use our tools, creative visionaries use our tools, and we are really honoured that they choose us. There is a lot of competition out there, and every time somebody chooses our tool, and create something great from it, I get really excited.”
“We were just talking about believable characters and what that means to Autodesk, and it is really about that Animation, Artificial Intelligence and Physics combo. Kynapse is an incredible AI package, what it is, is character routing through a world, and real time perception of that environment. Which allows like, if you are playing a shooting game for instance, and there are characters that are non-playable either shooting at you or buddies. Kynapse gives those characters ‘smarts’ about their environment. So they know where to take cover and so on. Kynapse has shipped in over 70 games to date.”
