Rising stars, Phoenix Labs reveals how IKinema’s real-time full body IK solving technology delivered the complete animation solution using smarter, efficient techniques without killing quality, and allowed time to enjoy more creative hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xJA3JeY_8&t=1s
Integrating IKinema enabled Phoenix Labs to hit the floor running when they harnessed the real-time IK solving technology, RunTime to deliver exceptional believability in their new co-op RPG, Dauntless. The PC game is due for release in 2017.
Phoenix Labs is a growing and ambitious team with an expanse of game development experience between them; they understood it was key to have an efficient inverse kinematics solving solution as the underpin to making their game great.
“IKinema has allowed us to do things with Dauntless that we weren’t sure we would be able to achieve at the beginning”
Simon Beaumont | Technical Director | Phoenix Labs
For the team, it came as a no brainer decision – IKinema was the best solution to deliver a much more engaging and exciting player experience. However, what surprised them was how much IKinema has dramatically improved development by heavily reducing time and budget blow-out, whilst still achieving the realism the game demanded.
Many man hours were saved by leveraging techniques, such as the ability for their behemoth and lizard creatures to believably navigate and negotiate in and around obstacles within their environments – using only one animation. Traditionally, it would mean generating innumerable animation graphs, as well as, very complicated ones.
“One of the really cool things with IKinema – you’re not just getting RunTime…. you’re actually getting a support team”
Phoenix Labs has leveraged IKinema in more ways than originally perceived achievable, as well as allowing their designers more time for creative freedom. So, for this studio, the only thing they’ve blown – are their minds.
IKinema RunTime for VR and Games
RunTime lets studios procedurally animate characters and multi-limbed creatures of differing proportions during gameplay. It significantly reduces animation assets whilst maintaining astonishingly believable body response to slash production time and cost. Eliminate ‘invisible man syndrome’ with full-body visibility in VR. Interact with obstacles and perform tasks with incredible accuracy, all within the game-world. The technology also allows developers to use the same code to achieve the same quality animation with minimum effort and expense across multi-player, VR, consoles, PC, and mobile games. IKinema RunTime is integrated with Unreal Engine, and now available for Unreal 4.13.
