IMS V2A MDK Licensed For Vampire: Bloodlines

The full press release:

IMS V2A MDKTM used to Create Lip-Synch and Facial Animations for “Vampire®: The Masquerade BloodlinesTM”

Research Triangle Park Area, N.C. (December 13, 2004) Interactive Multimedia Solutions, Inc. (www.IMS3D.com), a leading provider of voice-to-animation solutions for the multimedia market, is pleased to announce that Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) and Troika Games licensed the IMS V2A MDK to assist in the lip-synchronization and facial animation sequences in the newly released Vampire®: The Masquerade BloodlinesTM. Currently available for the PC at retail outlets nationwide, Bloodlines is an all-new RPG adventure driven by a devious and intriguing storyline, where gamers become creatures of the night, wandering the dark and gritty vampire world of modern day L.A. while a mysterious plot reveals itself.

“We are very excited and pleased that Activision and Troika chose our product to help them create lip-synchronization and facial animations for Vampire,” says Donovan Moxey, Ph.D., founder & CEO of IMS. “This is the type of relationship that shows the real value of our technology and products, and gets us noticed by other prominent game publishers. We have products that add value, and reduce costs associated with game development. Studios that have to manage tight budgets and short production schedules see what we offer as an excellent investment.”

The IMS V2A MDKTM is a file-based analysis engine that takes as input a human recorded voice file, or one generated from a text-to-speech (TTS) engine, and automatically creates precise mouth, jaw, and lip position data. The audio files can be in any language. The IMS voice-to-animation engine is ideal for English, but because of its unique proprietary co-articulation algorithm, quality animation data can be generated for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, and a number of other languages. This is a significant time and cost-savings advantage to game developers that want to localize their game titles for multiple markets. The IMS V2A MDKTM also produces corresponding automated speech gestures that are generally associated with speaking including head, eye, eyebrow movement, and eye blinks. These automated speech gestures in combination with the lip synchronization data can be use to automatically animate secondary game characters without the need for additional tweaking. Additionally, the product’s flexible API supports the use of text in combination with audio files to generate more precise lip synchronization data, and makes it a must-have for serious game developers and game publishers.

“We wanted to use the best phoneme analysis and extraction technology to help us create lip-synchronization and facial animations for Vampire,” said Graham Fuchs, Executive Producer at Activision. “This product in combination with Sourceâ„¢ – Valve’s next generation engine technology, provided us the ability to create high-quality facial animations for all the characters in Bloodlines. Integrating the MDK’s phoneme analysis engine as part of our game production process was simple, and allowed us the flexibility of creating as many dialog scenes as we wanted at costs significantly lower than what we have experienced in the past.”

The IMS V2A MDKTM product is licensed to game developers on a per/title basis. A product demo application and a product specification sheet for the IMS V2A MDKTM are available from the IMS web site (www.IMS3D.com).

About Activision, Inc.
Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and leisure products. Founded in 1979, Activision posted net revenues of $948 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2004.

Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, Scandinavia and the Netherlands. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company’s World Wide Web site, which is located at www.activision.com.

About Troika Games
Troika Games was founded in April 1998 by the creators of Fallout, the 1997 winner of OGR’s Game of the Year, and winner of RPG of the Year from PC Gamer, Gamespot, Adrenaline Vault, Games Domain, Gamesmania, and many others. Troika Games’ debut title, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, an original RPG published by Sierra Studios, was released August 2001 and has garnered the 2001 RPG of the Year award from PC Gamer, Computer Games magazine (where it also won their Best Writing award), the Vault Network, the Electric Playground and IGN.COM (where it also won their Reader’s Choice award).

About IMS
Interactive Multimedia Solutions, Inc. (IMS) is a multimedia software and solutions company focused on developing and delivering innovative software solutions that allow for the seamless integration of interactive animated talking digital characters as part of multimedia presentations to be delivered via the web or as part of a DVD/CD-ROM. The software solutions developed by IMS can be applied across a number of markets including the Internet, Direct Marketing, Computer Based Interactive Training, Entertainment, and Interactive Kiosk systems. More information on the IMS suite of products and solutions is available at www.IMS3D.com.