NaturalMotion, Ltd., developers of the highly acclaimed euphoria motion synthesis technology, today announced that Ninja Theory Ltd., the developer behind flagship PlayStation 3 title Heavenly Sword has licensed morpheme, the company's animation engine and graphical authoring tool.

"One of Ninja Theory's genuine goals is to push the technology envelope and create gaming experiences that are immersive and truly next-generation," said Mike Ball, Chief Technology Ninja at Ninja Theory. "Today's games require more than just realistic graphics - character animations need to be smooth, lifelike and convincing in order to really bring gamers into our worlds, and morpheme delivers the level of control required for that aspect of game development."

morpheme is robust animation middleware designed to give developers and animators unprecedented creative control over the look of their final in-game animation by allowing them to author and preview blends, blend trees and transition graphs in real time.

"With Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory demonstrated their commitment to moving levels of visual fidelity forward in gaming," said Andy Payne, NaturalMotion's vice president of sales for Europe and Asia. "We believe morpheme will help them continue to raise the bar for the development of their new IP by giving more power to the animation artists and developers behind their groundbreaking games."