Remember those epic battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies, featuring a cast of thousands? Although designing the scenes was a time-consuming task for the animators, their job was made easier by groundbreaking technology from Massive Software.

Massive was founded by New Zealander Stephen Regelous, who programmed a unique piece of software for director Peter Jackson to ease the creation of crowd-related visual effects. The idea was to use ‘autonomous agent’ animation to turn the creation of complicated visual effects sequences involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters into a practical reality.

Since then, the company has helped many filmmakers realise their creative visions, from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong to, more recently in 2006 and 2007, Flags of our Fathers, Happy Feet and 300.

Leading facilities in film including Rhythm & Hues and Animal Logic now use Massive, and effects created by Massive customers can be seen in TV commercials for the likes of Nike, PlayStation 2, Corona and Budweiser.

“Massive has become an important tool for us at our facility,” says Richard Hollander, President of Rhythm & Hues’ Film Division. “It is now clearly an application that is providing wide-ranging capabilities for the motion picture industry."

The Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Massive with a Scientific and Technical Academy Award in 2004.

The time since then has also proved busy and exciting, says the company’s CEO Diane Holland. In the second half of 2005, the 3D animation software developer shipped a new version of its flagship Massive application, added scores of top-end advertising and crowd control motion picture clients – including Digital Domain and Method Studios – to its portfolio, and launched Massive Jet, which allows many more users and markets to create scenes portraying hundreds of thousands of realistic virtual characters.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Stephen Regelous said Massive’s software will inevitably become even more camera-friendly.

“From here, I think you will see Massive agents continuing to move closer and closer to the camera,” he says. “And it won’t just be the big crowds, but (will be used when) doing singular computer animation. We probably won’t see it for hero characters yet, but more and more productions are being filled with CG characters and will need more efficiency to generate film-quality animation.”

www.massivesoftware.com

Source: Massive profile on current NZNT site.

Back to top