HumanIK can be seen in the digital characters in Assassin's Creed. © 2007 Ubisoft Ent. 

MP: People are used to considering middleware and asset creation as two different processes with different characteristics, but we started to demonstrate how you can bridge the two. Our customers got very excited and are now beginning to tell us how this can streamline their workflows. We will be enabling the authoring of assets within 3ds Max and Maya that contain more than geometry, UVs, animations and textures. These assets can be read directly by the game engine and are "middleware-ready," helping ensure that assets comply with the engine requirements and perform well within the engine. This will be invaluable to game developers as they tap more distributed production resources and outsourcing companies, and may at times struggle with the quality of the assets they receive.

Integrating middleware into the art creation allows developers to review their art in a similar context to how it will appear in the game engine without leaving 3ds Max or Maya. For example, if the AI guides the character to turn 180 degrees, you can preview the results right inside of Maya and you can start catching more gameplay red flags early in the process. Our middleware solutions will provide total fidelity between 3ds Max and Maya and the game engine that implements them so you'll have a "What You See Is What You Play" solution!

Kynogon’s Kynapse AI middleware for games.

BD: And will we see more integration of Kynogon technology into Autodesk products?

MP: Definitely. We have plans to use these technologies across a wide spectrum of industries… Every country in the world is starting to model their cities in 3D, and the Kynapse technology offers some very relevant potential for these applications. The path-finding and AI technology can be used to do simulations of crowds inside of buildings or stadiums or to model and simulate car traffic in digital models of cities. As the teams get to know each other, I expect we will certainly find a lot of unexpected use for both Realviz and Kynogon technologies inside of Autodesk's Media & Ent., but also inside of our AEC, Manufacturing, Plant and Geospatial groups.

BD: I take it you will also continue developing and marketing standalone versions of Realviz tools and Kynogon's Kynapse?

MP: For sure -- we'll continue to sell the Stitcher product line, ImageModeler and Movimento. These products are all great complements to Autodesk's existing product portfolio. We will also continue to support Kynogon's Kynapse as a standalone middleware product.

BD: Will the employees and development teams of these companies remain in France as Autodesk employees?

MP: Yes. The Realviz team will remain in the south of France and we'll be happy to visit them once in a while. The Kynogon team is both in Montreal and in Paris, so the Montreal team will move to Autodesk's Media & Ent. headquarters in Montreal and the Paris team just moved into bigger offices in the heart of Paris.

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.