Euphoria
More info
- Creator
- NaturalMotion
- Type
- Animation middleware
- License
- Proprietary
NaturalMotion's animation engine, which makes game characters try to keep their balance instead of just collapsing like sacks.
NaturalMotion was founded in Oxford in 2001 by zoologist Torsten Reil, whose research used neural networks to teach simulated bodies to walk. Euphoria is that research turned into a product: the character is a physics body with muscle control, and when shoved it throws out its arms, stumbles a step or grabs for a railing — an active ragdoll rather than a dead one.
The breakthrough came in 2008 with GTA IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, where no pedestrian fell the same way twice. Rockstar built Euphoria into its RAGE engine and has stuck with it ever since. Zynga bought NaturalMotion in 2014, mostly for its mobile games, and Euphoria stopped being sold widely — which explains why so few other games stumble quite as convincingly.