NaturalMotion announced today that they have signed a licensing agreement with Ninja Theory. The Heavenly Sword developer will now have access to NaturalMotion's morpheme. The middleware serves as both a graphical authoring tool and animation engine which helps give developers and animators greater control over the way 3D models move in-game.

"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."

"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."