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Lately, I've been researching into Natural Motion's Dynamic Motion Synthesis which produces some really amazing bi-pedal animation in real-time.

Unfortunately, I cannot affort a $12,000 dollar license so, I'm pondering over ways to create my own Real-time animation system.

Natural Motion isn't really offering details on how the system works other than stating "Dynamic Motion Synthesis simulates the actual nervous impulses that move the muscle fibres that in turn move the skeleton." They also mention the use of a rag-doll physics engine at the core of the system.

Although short, this is enough info to get my wheels spinning and I have selected Dark Physics for my core Physics Engine. DarkPhysics offers several types of Rigid Body Joints (ie: Sphere Joint) which will be suitable in handling joint contraints like those in the human body.

I visualize simulating nerve impulses and muscles will require the skeleton to be set up to use standard kinetics. I'm gonna have to due review on the human muscle and skeletal systems to get a full picture, but, ideas are flowing.

If you were to re-create something like euphoria using dark physics, you would be a god among men.

Realistically, I dont expect to re-create anything like euphoria. However I'm shooting for real-time animation inspired by Natural Motion's statement 'simulates the actual nervous impulses that move the muscle fibres that in turn move the skeleton.' I expect movement to be clunky and un-natural at best, but, that could be useful in a game where robotic movement is desired.

Natural Motion isn't a mature product. It's not middleware because it has to be custom implemented by Euphoria into each engine, hence the cost.

It's used in GTA4, but its effects don't impact the game much. Regular animations are used until something bad happens to a character, then they are switched over to Natural Motion while they fly through the air and collide with stuff. The reason that regular animation is still being used is because NM is way processor intensive, and the animation doesn't look that good. The only other time it's used in GTA4 is when the character is drunk and you have to walk home. It's used when he's drunk because that's how it looks when he walks as a ragdoll, and they use camera tricks to hide the ugliness of the animation.

One day it will be that great. Until then we have regular ragdolls.

After some consideration, I realized manually moving limbs would not offer any greater value than use traditional animation methods. I also possess the Enhanced Animation Enhancement Pack which looks like it does a great job of blending animations. I'm just going to stick with using it.

Just another moment where I was letting feature creep get the best of me.

Well, it definitely has some advantages. If you use it in the way I described above you'd stick with regular animations until something happened to the model then you'd switch control to Natural Motion. The extreme advantage this would give you is a ragdoll whose limbs collide with his surroundings realistically. With regular animation even if you are detecting collisions your model's specific limbs can't react to anything, all you can do is perhaps reverse an animation (that's what I do in Geisha House).

So, if a box rolls down a hill and you detect that it collides with your guy you surrender him to NM. His legs would get knocked out from under him and he'd try to catch himself. His goal would be to get right again, and when he did you'd simply switch it back to normal animation.

Right now if that character gets hit with the same box and you turn him into a ragdoll he'd get tossed around like he was dead. To right him you'd have to let him fall then morph him into a lying position then animate him standing up. The effect is okay, but lame compared to what NM can do. NM controlled ragdolls are actually trying to survive and correct their balance.

All that being said, it's still not a good way to perform normal animation. Imagine this - you're animating a normal model, and it's invisible. You have a ragdoll right on top of it. The limbs are tied to the animated model's limbs. Every time the animation moves it pulls on the ragdoll limb and attempts to move it. The difference is the limbs will stop if they touch something - a rock, a wall, a sword, etc. That's not exactly what NM is doing but the effect is similar - your guy would flop around like a rubber zombie. It's a fantastic new way to do ragdolls but at this point that's all it is.

I would absolutely love to combine Advanced Animations with NM. Imagine - perfectly blended animations combined with intelligent ragdolls.