IRISH SOFTWARE firm Havok has won a four-year contract with Lego which will allow the Danish toy maker to sell customised designs online.
The online tool, Lego Digital Designer, allows users to create customised designs, using a palate of Lego shapes and colours. The creations can then be purchased from LegoFactory.com, which will ship them – complete with instructions on how to build the design – to the customer.
Havok’s “physics engine” will be used to add realistic effects to the animations in the designer tool.
The fixed-price contract with Lego is “substantial” according to David O’Meara, managing director of the Dublin-headquartered firm which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel. The service will go live next month.
Mr O’Meara said the contract demonstrated that the firm’s strategy to move into new markets was starting to pay dividends. Havok has recently signed deals with Autodesk, the maker of design software which is integrating it into its own products, and with Thales, the French defence contractor, which is using it to create training simulators for soldiers.
Up to this, Havok’s software, which adds realism to digital animations and special effects to film, has primarily been sold to computer game developers and movie studios.
“When you combine Lego with Autodesk it is giving us credibility to move into other areas and learn more,” said Mr O’Meara. “It takes us more into the whole industrial simulation market.”
He said he did not have any concerns about dealing with the defence sector, as Thales was reselling its software to the end users.
Cloth, a software product which adds realism to the movement of animated fabrics, has become Havok’s fastest selling product since its release in March 2008.
Mr O'Meara said it has exceeded sales projections and THQ, the publishers who released UFC 2009 Undisputed, the first game using the software, have placed an order for the sequel.
Havok’s sales this year are up on 2008 said Mr O’Meara, despite the fact that games developers have “restructured and cut costs”.
The firm has also started recruitment for 40 staff – half based in Dublin and half in San Francisco – who will develop Havok’s software for the next generation of games consoles.
Havok is looking to recruit computer science PhDs, but Mr O’Meara said the bulk of new staff were likely to be recruited overseas and relocated to Ireland.
