News
Havok 5 rolls out
Michael French Sep 5 2007, 3:31pm
"Significant enhancements" of Physics, Animation and Behavior tools promised
Havok has released the fifth version of its tool suite, promising developers access to a number of new features across its modular set of tools.
According to Havok the improvements will help speed up the work of developers working on games and those working in film SFX work.
Specifically, Havok 5 makes big enhancements to its Physics and Animation components with the Behavior tool also getting new features.
Havok Physics 5 boasts memory and CPU performance improvements and also adds Wii support for Havok’s Visual Debugger.
Meanwhile Animation 5 includes a new run-time mirroring feature, which Havok says cuts content creation and memory requirements in half for directional animation assets. It also offers compression enhancements claimed to reduce the memory needed to store arbitrary character animations by up to 25 per cent over previous releases.
Plus, Havok Behavior 5 includes what Havok says is the first unified authoring environment and SDK to combine the power of physics with procedural animation and traditional animation assets.
Havok 5 has already been used in games like of Stranglehold and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The technology is available for Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox, 360, GameCube, and the PC.
"With our commitment to aiding developers to create more fun and realistic games, more economically, Havok 5 is creating great excitement amongst our customer base and is currently being used in the development of dozens of triple-A game titles. Havok has become a one stop shop for cross-platform, professionally supported first class technology solutions for the industry," said David O’Meara, CEO of Havok.
