Red 5 Using NaturalMotion's Morpheme Engine For Firefall Animation

NaturalMotion announced today that its Morpheme animation engine would be used in Red 5's upcoming free-to-play action MMO Firefall. Saying that "believability remains a priority" for the project, Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern said the animation middleware would help the game be realistic while also improving development time. "If you cut corners when it comes to animation, you are betraying the vision of your game," Kern said in a statement. "Morpheme lets us meet our high standards of quality while maintaining a very efficient pipeline." After years of production delays and recent layoffs, Red 5 Studios announced last month that Firefall is being targeting a 2011 release from Chinese MMO publisher The9. The team-based MMO shooter promises hundreds of players will be able to play together in the game's open worlds. First unveiled in 2006, the Morpheme engine has since been used in projects by companies including Ubisoft, Disney, Codemasters, THQ, CCP, Bioware, Robomodo and others. A free version of the company's Endorphin has been used by over 200,000 animators, according to the company. Earlier this year, NaturalMotion released its first self-developed game, Backbreaker, which reached over 1.5 million downloads on the iOS App Store. Publisher 505 Games has done a console port of the football game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, although sales figures for those editions are not disclosed.