Massive (software)
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Massive (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) is a high-end computer animation and artificial intelligence software package used for generating crowd-related visual effects for film and television.
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[edit] Overview
Massive is a software package developed by Stephen Regelous for the visual effects industry. Its flagship feature is the ability to quickly and easily create thousands - or millions - of agents that all act as individuals. Through the use of fuzzy logic, the software enables every agent to respond individually to its surroundings. These reactions affect the agent's behaviour, changing how they act and controlling motion-captured animations to create a realistic looking character.
In addition to the artificial intelligence abilities of Massive, there are numerous other features, including cloth simulation, rigid body dynamics and GPU based hardware rendering. Massive Software also create several pre-built agents to perform certain tasks, such as stadium crowd agents, rioting 'mayhem' agents and simple agents who walk around and talk to each other.
[edit] History
Massive was originally developed in Wellington, New Zealand. Peter Jackson required software that allowed armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fight, a problem that had not been solved in filmmaking before. Regelous created Massive to allow Weta Digital to create many of the award-winning visual effects, particularly the battle sequences, for the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films.
Since then, it has evolved into a complete product and has been licensed by many other visual effects houses.
[edit] In Production
Massive has been used in many productions, both commercials and feature-length films, small-scale and large.
Some significant examples include:
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- King Kong (Peter Jackson's Remake)
- Flags of our Fathers (besides battle and crowd scenes, even shots of seacraft crossing the Pacific were created with Massive)
- Carlton Draught: Big Ad
- Category 7: The End of the World
- Eragon
- Happy Feet
Peter Jackson, as executive producer, is expected to use Massive during alien battle sequences in the game-to-movie adaptation of Halo.
[edit] See also
- Crowd simulation
- Fuzzy Logic
- Emergence
- NetLogo - multi-agent programming language and integrated modeling environment
- Maya (software)
[edit] External links
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