When Ezio Auditore da Firenze swims, climbs ladders, and walks up and down stairs, he does so with the help of Autodesk.
That's because Ezio Auditore da Firenze is a fictional character in the video game
Assassin's Creed II, and developer Ubisoft Montreal chose Autodesk's HumanIK middleware for its character animation and inverse kinematics implementation, according to a statement released by Autodesk today.
Having first employed the middleware suite in 2007's original
Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft Montreal chose to use the same solution for the sequel, by way of the studio's integration of the tools into its own proprietary development environment.
"One of the most important aspects of the
Assassin's Creed II game play is the ability for characters to climb," said the game's lead programmer, James Therien. "HumanIK allowed us to build new climbing moves into the game and iterate them very quickly without ever having to worry about the quality of the IK solving."
Autodesk says Ubisoft also licenses Autodesk's 3ds Max and MotionBuilder software.
