Adding Character - NaturalMotion
(Isis - 833)
It would seem an unlikely place to find Oxford technology, but hugely successful video games Grand Theft Auto IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed are just some of the customers of 2001 Isis spin-out NaturalMotion. The company’s software takes a starring role in giving the games’ characters movement and personality.
The software, Euphoria, enables characters to interact and respond to their virtual environment, taught by algorithms developed by NaturalMotion’s CEO, Torsten Reil and his colleagues, as he was working on his D.Phil at Oxford’s Zoology Department.
NaturalMotion has also been used in films such as Poseidon and Troy.
Now based in Oxford and San Francisco, the company markets, sells and supports its products globally to customers in the games, film, post production and broadcast markets.
“Setting up the company and negotiating the investment would have been impossible without Isis – they acted as a catalyst and enabler to get this done,” says Torsten Reil, in reflecting on the beginnings of the business.
A University Challenge Seed Fund grant in 2000 provided the crucial funding to get the first programming started, and Isis also introduced the initial angels investors to the company.
At the time of the spin-out in 2001, Reil explained the advantages that NaturalMotion had over traditional methods of animation: “The advantage of NaturalMotion's approach is that we can produce realistic animations in a more cost effective way. In addition, NaturalMotion's animations are completely interactive because they are simulations of the "real thing". What you see on the screen is not just a hollow computer drawing of a character, it is the character. This gives the user complete freedom.”
Lead Researchers: Dr Torsten Reil, Dr Colm Massey
University Department: Zoology
Date of disclosure to Isis: 2000
University Challenge Seed Fund (UCSF) Support: £23,500