Massive Two Towers Battle

ShadowLight writes ""In December vast hordes of eager filmgoers will mob cineplexes across the land and witness, at the climax of The Two Towers, one of the most anticipated scenes in recent movie history: the great Battle of Helm's Deep." This article talks about the software, named Massive, used to create this 50,000 creature battle."

The AI used

[Damion]

The way I heard that the AI for the battle scene was programmed was such that every one of the creatures had a slightly different set of paramaters, with the same goal of maximizing damage, while minimizing casualties.
On the first run, every single one of the thousands of little AIs decided that the best way to minimize casualties was to turn and run away.

Re:The AI used

[duckpoopy]

"The only way to win is not to play." -WOPR, 1982

Re:The AI used

[lawndart]

Actually one of the guys from Massive gave a talk at my lab and they had video of it. All the little dudes in back rows turned and ran away. Evidently their software agents couldn't see any of the enemy agents so they ran around trying to find some!

Re:The AI used

[child_of_mercy]

Actually Wellington once observed that the French infantry columns broke from the rear, that is it wasn't the guys at the front taking the damage who ran away, it was the guys getting nervous at the back who couldn't take it, and as they ran more guys would take the hint and bail.

it sounds like the AI were arriving at a similar conclusion.

Re:The AI used

[br0ck]

You've heard an exaggeration from the previous SlashDot article [theonering.net].

In another early simulation, Jackson and Regelous watched as several thousand characters fought like hell while, in the background, a small contingent of combatants seemed to think better of it and ran away. They weren't programmed to do this. It just happened. 'It was spooky.' Jackson said in an interview last year.

Re:The AI used

[grub]

watched as several thousand characters fought like hell while, in the background, a small contingent of combatants seemed to think better of it and ran away

Those characters had the AI modelled after French soldiers. You do know why the streets of Paris are lined with trees, yes? Because the Germans like to march in the shade.

Ah, the "Python-Camelot" defense tactic...

[Rai]

RUNAWAY!!

Re:The AI used

[pyros]

I like the helicopter flight sim demo in australia where the kangaroo AI's were modeled too closely to people. They scattered, regrouped, and launched a surface-to-air strike taking down the chopper. Sorry I don't have a link, but I did actually read it from some news site or magazine, like Info World or something.

Re:The AI used

[Verne]

I got it in email as follows:

The reuse of some object-oriented code has caused tactical
headaches for Australia's armed forces. As virtual reality
simulators assume larger roles in helicopter combat training,
programmers have gone to great lengths to increase the
realism of their scenarios, including detailed landscapes and,
in the case of the Northern Territory's Operation Phoenix,
herds of kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give
away a helicopter's position).

The head of the Defence Science & Technology Organization's
Land Operations/Simulation division reportedly instructed
developers to model the local marsupials' movements and
reactions to helicopters.

Being efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some
code originally used to model infantry detachment reactions
under the same stimuli, changed the mapped icon from a
soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the figures' speed of
movement.

Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting
American pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the virtual
kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos
scattered, as predicted, and the visiting Americans nodded
appreciatively... then did a double-take as the kangaroos
reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of
Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. (Apparently the
programmers had forgotten to remove that part of the
infantry coding.)

The lesson? Objects are defined with certain attributes,
and any new object defined in terms of an old one inherits
all the attributes. The embarrassed programmers had learned
to be careful when reusing object-oriented code, and the
Yanks left with a newfound respect for Australian wildlife.

Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point
onward have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were
meant to.

From June 15, 1999 Defence Science and Technology Organization
Lecture Series, Melbourne, Australia, and staff reports

Right, now hit me with the karma baby!

Re:The AI used

[TheGrimace]

Only somewhat true. Check out snopes [snopes.com] for a more accurate (although less humourous) rendition and the true origins of this not quite urban legend.

The Tolkien Cellphone

[Alien54]

Of course, there's humor too:

• To avoid surprises, Massive programmers weeded out ineffective agents and duplicated ones that worked. About a dozen initial master characters formed the basic genetic blueprint for more than 50,000 digital creations, which were then individualized by adding random variables such as aggression or happiness. (A few update Tolkien; keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone.)

At least they're not calling in an air strike, like Granada.

Grenada

[wiredog]

They didn't use cell phones, they used pay phones and calling cards. When I was in the Army in 85-88 I knew some guys who were there.

The only one I knew who was wounded by enemy, rather than friendly, action was shot in the ass by an irate farmer, armed with a shotgun, who thought it 'them damn kids' after his livestock again.

BFD.

[DarkHelmet]

I have this awesome rendering package called B.R.A.I.N... When I read the book, it made this breathtaking scene with over 100,000 monsters...

And the coolest thing about it is that I did it 3 years ago when I actually read the book.

Re:BFD.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I have this awesome rendering package called B.R.A.I.N...

I tried that technique too, but after 200 pages of Frodo and his buddies wandering through the woods and talking about mushrooms, my B.R.A.I.N. made me throw the fucking thing across the room.

Maybe I'm just a low-brow or something, but I tend to prefer books where things happen.

Re:BFD.

[captaincucumber]

I think you need to install a plugin package called P.A.T.I.E.N.C.E.

Re:BFD.

[Cid Highwind]

I prefer to just link the reading routines to libskimmer.so. If nothing's happening, flip ahead a few (2-3) pages. If people are swinging swords or some important-sounding exchange is going on, flip back and read the intervening pages. If not, set mypage=thispage, and recurse. If Tom Bombadil is singing or if someone is explaining elven family structures, skip the whole damn chapter.

(ob-herasy)It works well on the Old Testament, too!(*lightning bolt*)

Re:BFD.

[Imperial Tacohead]

Personally, I hated the book the first time I read it. Unlike The Hobbit, which is filled with action and adventure, the vast majority of Lord of the Rings consists of traveling to somewhere where something might happen, and having a sense of dread and foreboding about it. When I read it the second time, I knew that nothing was going to happen for long stretches of the book, so I was able to have greater patience with the whole thing, and get more out of it. Although I still found the endless talk of destiny and family trees and Elven racial superiority to be extremely tedious. (Incidentally, I'll be interested to see if the dark-complexioned evil men of Harad and their war elephants will show up in the next two movies.)

Re:BFD.

[chabotc]

Well i think you sumerised the feeling that the book was supposed to replay quite well. A large part of the book is about man's journey towards death .. "dread and foreboding"

It is also definatly true the book is very much about the characters development, and not the modern heroism that most current books seem to aspire to.

Re:BFD.

[Imperial Tacohead]

Dude, I was like 12 when I read it the first time. Do people lurk on this board waiting for the opportunity to lash out and prove their intellectual superiority?

Re:BFD.

[mekkab]

yes.

P.S.- my wife just read the trilogy in a day or two.

I asked "How?!"

She replied "Oh, I skipped all that stupid singing crap. Man! They sing abou everything!"

Re:BFD.

[EvilAlien]

"Do people lurk on this board waiting for the opportunity to lash out and prove their intellectual superiority?"

<whisper>
Did you just figure that out??

Sure, they decided to use "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." instead of "We're smarter than you. Suck it." like originally planned, but the result has been the same. </whisper>

Anyways, I'm really trying hard not to get too excited about little AI warriors each making their own combat decisions on screen. I'm really trying hard not to think about this. I tell myself, repeatedly, that getting excited about artificial intelligence is normal.

I think I need to shower.

Re:BFD.

[EuroChild]

After months of trying to get my brother to read LotR he finally started and sent me this email which sums up Fellowship pretty well:

Very different to the movie isn't it? Lots of unecessary, and not very interesting detail. He likes to take his time, old JRRT. You know: they travelled along the creek before reaching an outcrop of green grass, which in turn lead to a valley of birches. Passing through them, they noticed a green mound upon which was some moss which has nothing to do with the story, nor does the ridge they then decided to walk across. The oak lined track they followed for several hours is also irrelivant, but it can be seen in a map in the back of the book. "Would you like me to carry that pack for you sir?" Sam asked Frodo obediently. "No thankyou Sam. Sit boy. Good Hobbit!" Frodo replied.

Re:BFD.

[Col. Panic]

Very different to the movie isn't it? Lots of unecessary, and not very interesting detail.

Yes, unlike film, books must convey ideas that stimulate all the senses in simple print. Authors strive to describe sights, sounds and scents using nothing more than pen and paper. Some readers relish such writing and pore over the pages word-by-word. Others just want to get to the action. To each their own.

Re:BFD.

[charon_on_acheron]

But, if the journey hadn't been so damned long, maybe Frodo could have cast the Ring away, without losing a finger.

Just writing that reminds me how many miles I have walked around malls with the wife, when we only went there to get one thing. By the end, I'm delusional too.

Making creatues

[Uhh_Duh]

My guess is that a few bored programmers got together one night and decided to render themselves some women. They got greedy and started making themselves multiple partners, then realized all they did was fight over who had to be this guys girlfriend.

That's when the light went on.

Re:Making creatues

[Captain Large Face]

That's when the light went on.

And then they realised they'd created Orcs. Eek!

/. is already using this...

[krugdm]

...to make massive duplicates [slashdot.org] of previously posted stories!

Anticipation

[GeckoFood]

...this 50,000 creature battle...

This is sure to be a big box office draw, but 50,000 scantily-clad beach bimbo babes might do even better at the box office!

DVD

[Captain Large Face]

I hope they have some interesting features on the Two Towers DVD(s) related to MASSIVE. There was a bit on the Special Edition DVD of the Fellowship of the Ring, but not as much as I would've liked.

From the article

[SuperMario666]

In Return of the King, the final film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the climactic battle--yes, the Battle of Helm's Deep is just a run-up--is rumored to employ more than 100,000 characters.

Oh Hell Yes.

I can't be the only geek with a hard-on here can I?

Re:From the article

[kin_korn_karn]

Oh Hell Yes.

I can't be the only geek with a hard-on here can I?

um... yeah, you can be.

anticipated?

[ArmorFiend]

one of the most anticipated scenes in recent movie history: the great Battle of Helm's Deep.

Uh, what kind of monkey anticipates this battle? It's hardly ranks among the many battles in Return of the King. And at the end of the day there's plenty of similar stuff out there: braveheart, Ben Hur, yadda yadda yadda. Please spin down the hype reflex.

Re:anticipated?

[jgalun]

Actually, I am very much anticipating the Battle of Helm's Deep. Let me give you my good reason, and then my bad reason.

The good reason is that, if I recall correctly (and I'm not positive I do), the three major battles in the Lord of the Rings are different: the Battle of Helm's Deep is about holding on with no reinforcements coming, the battle at Minas Tirith is heavy on Nazgul and is about holding out til reinforcements come, and the final battle is about dying valiantly in an effort to delay Sauron until Frodo can destroy the ring. So they do have different feels.

Anyway, the bad reason for why I am looking forward to the Battle of Helm's Deep is that I didn't really like the first LoTR movie that much. I was a huge fan of the books when I was younger (I read them, and the Silmarillion, dozens of times), but I felt that the movie lacked the sense of mystery and sadness (at the passing of the great ages of magic and elves) that the books had. To me, the magic of the written word could not be translated into the screen. I could imagine Gandalf somehow becoming more imposing, but seeing it in the movie seemed like a parlor trick rather than magic. Similarly, I could imagine Galadriel being somehow different and magical, but seeing her with a glow about her is just...too straightforward.

That being said, the one thing I loved about the movie was how beautiful it was. The scenes in that movie were astounding. And that's why I'm looking forward to the Battle of Helm's Deep. :)

PARENT: +5 Spoiler

[fferreres]

Handle with care. I read LOTR so much time ago that I forgot all the details. I'm trying and making a huge effort not to remember anything. Would be nice not to see many spoilers and still be able to have a discussion about the visual effects and other generics that do not tell what will happen.

Calling Dr. Freud

[kitzilla]

The "Two Towers." Now a software program called "Massive." No trend here.

My Vorpal Sword is bigger than yours.

Notice the closing comment.

[Prince_Ali]

Dan Koeppel, a film-school dropout, has written for Wired and The New York Times Magazine. Although a longtime Tolkien reader, he draws the line at The Silmarillion.

Wuss.

Re:Notice the closing comment.

[David Gould]

Reading The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales was great! For the better part of a year, my insomnia was cured -- whenever I would have trouble sleeping, I'd try to slog through the next three or four pages and it would knock me out like a hammer to the head. I can't tell you how often I've wished for such a soporific book since finishing those, but nothing else that I've found comes close.

The Silmarillion.

[Grendel Drago]

Actually, there is a plot. There are five parts.

Ainulindale, the music of the Ainur. It began with Eru, the One, whom the Elves call Iluvatar. His thoughts became the Ainur, the most mighty of whom were called the Valar (the others were Maiar). As Iluvatar created and shaped Arda, the world, Melkor, mightiest of the Valar, tried to shape the world in his image, to achieve dominance. He rebelled against Iluvatar and was from then on known as Morgoth.

Valaquenta. Mostly an enumeration of the fourteen Valar (after his fall, Melkor was not counted among them), and the most important of the Maiar, such as Sauron and the Balrogs.

Quenta Silmarillion. Something about two lamps being destroyed by Morgoth and the Sun and Moon being created to replace them. The First Age starts with the creation of the Sun and ends with Morgoth's final defeat by the Valar. There's some stuff about Silmarils in there, too.

Akallabeth. As a reward for their service to the Valar, the men who fought with them (the Dunedain, "men of the west") were given a great island which they called Numenor. They built a great empire, but were deceived by Sauron, who told them that if they defeated the Valar and took possession of their forbidden land, Valinor, that they too would become immortal. The last king of Numenor, Ar-Pharazon, tried this, and the Valar called upon Iluvatar to reshape the world. Numenor sunk into the sea (though a few escaped), and Valinor was removed from the plane of the world.

Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age. Sauron forges the twenty rings of power. The Last Alliance of men and elves defeats him, ending the Second Age. Isildur refuses to destroy the ring; he is killed by the orcs and it is lost. It passes to Gollum, and that's where LOTR begins.

This is from a quick skimming of The Encyclopedia of Arda [glyphweb.com]. See, when "Gil-galad" or "Morgoth" are mentioned, I can look them up and find out what the heck he's talking about.

If someone has actually read the Silmarillion, feel free to correct me. I'm leaving out quite a bit and possible screwing other stuff up. (For instance, the dwarves were first-created after the Ainur, but the elves awoke first.)

--grendel drago

Re:The Silmarillion.

[The_Shadows]

Valaquenta. Mostly an enumeration of the fourteen Valar (after his fall, Melkor was not counted among them), and the most important of the Maiar, such as Sauron and the Balrogs.


And Olorin. You know, Gandalf. Gandalf was, in actuality a Maiar who wanted to remain after the Valar sealed themselves away. Not exactly a fallen Maiar, like Sauron or Balrogs. Make for odd family reunions though.

I will say that your grasp of the parts you mentioned is fairly cohesive, excluding the parts from the Quenta Silmarillion. The other 4 parts comprise around under 20% of the book "The Silmarillion."

The Quenta Silmarillion, in addition to the creation of the sun and moon, details the creation and awakening of the elves. It deals with one of the original (or second gen, can't remember now) elves, Feanor and his lust for power. He was the one that created the Silmarils (Silmarillion -- Silmarils, it's not actually coincidence). They were three jewels crafted by Feanor and they contained light from, effectively, the tree of life.

Morgoth entered a pact with Sheloeb's kin (not entirely clear if it is or isn't actually Sheloeb) to steal all the elves jewels and drain the tree of life. They were successful, and stole the Silmarils as well. The elves and the Valar could have used the Silmarils to restore the tree, had they been present.

The rest of the Silmarillion revolves around Feanor and his offspring having taken an oath to find the Silmarils and keep them, and to fight anyone who got in their way, including the Valar. They were outcast into Middle-Earth.

The story then goes through to be one of the more potent that Tolkien has written. It details the arrival of men and dwarves, the lives of the elves and their collective struggle against Morgoth.

It contains, among other things, the stories of Turin, Beren and Luthien, the final downfall of Morgoth, and the eventual loss of the Silmarils.

So, I'm really just expounding on what you said. But, it's a great book, and I really would recommend it.

Re:The Silmarillion.

[Simon Brooke]

If someone has actually read the Silmarillion, feel free to correct me.

I've actually read the Silmarillion, and, indeed, I prefer it to the Lord of the Rings. However, it has to be said that I've also read the Old Testament, the Heimskringla and assorted other similar things. You can't approach the Silmarillion as if it were a novel. It isn't. It's a complete synthetic mythos, one of very few that exist, and probably the best.

I don't know why anyone

[dubbayu_d_40]

would care what effects are in movies anymore. They can do anything, they have BIG computers.

This is a good thing. The last Star Wars finially convinced me that Lucas is a POS because I wasn't distracted by his "special effects."

Hopefully effects will now be more relevant to the story if we are taking cgi for granted.

My guess is TTT can hold it's own without the gee whiz cgi.

Re:I don't know why anyone

[Patik]

They can do anything, they have BIG computers.

They have effects that fit seamlessly into the video? They have entire films of CG humans that are indistinguishable from real humans?

Sorry, but I think they've got a ways to go, and I'm really interested to see what these movies can do to raise the bar.

Re:I don't know why anyone

[fferreres]

And sometimes, too pretty = too fake. I don't know, but the original Millenium Falcon looks to me more real than the shiny silver plane in the new series or the "parachute" weasel.

The SW story in the original SW was not *that* much innovative, but it was beautifully narrated, well acted and at times hilariuos (not perfect, but the guys looked like they actually where there and alive, real people not script-followers). The plot had many unexpected clever twists also.

It was not so much the special effects. They added ambience, but the story could have been placed in the past or even further in the future and still be a classic.

The new saga well, I can't criticize part by part, I just didn't feel anything at all, the characters felt like reading a stupid script ("I MUST do this, it's in the script!!").

E.2 was a bit better (compared to the boredness that E.1 provided me). The only guy that felt slightly real was the fallen Jedi (which didn't even look like a bad guy at all) and the cloning aliens.

MASSIVE Hordes of Slashdot Readers Ecstatic

[dmccarty]

In a momentous surge of self-denial, Timothy was able to restrain himself for a full 20 days before posting a repeat story [slashdot.org] about The Two Towers. Slashdot readers, rejoice!

NEW CATEGORY

[Viking Coder]

How about a new category? "Movie SPOILERS". That way, I can filter out articles on it, so I don't have to accidentally read about "the most anticipated scene" in a movie that's not out yet, just in case I've been working very hard to NOT see anything about the movie, so that I can fully enjoy it when it finally DOES come out?

Damnit.

Oh by the way:
It's a sled.
They drive off the cliff.
It's a guy.
Rose lives, Jack dies.
He's dead.

Re:NEW CATEGORY

[bugnuts]

Argh, there are TOWERS in this?

Thanks for ruining the movie. :)

I love this game

[mekkab]

okay, lesse,

Citizen Cain,
Thelma & Louis,
Crying Game
Titanic
The sixth sense

This game is GREAT! [spies.com]

Re:NEW CATEGORY

[stefanlasiewski]

Yeah, I heard that since Tolkein died there won't be a third book in the Trilogy. Whaaa! Now I'll never find out if Frodo and Sam made it to Mordor!!!

Re:NEW CATEGORY

[halftrack]

You're on /. and haven't read LOTR??

Watch out, /.'s infiltrated, the enemy agents are in.

Re:NEW CATEGORY

[xigxag]

Aw fuck, all that moderation I just did, down the drain. But what the hell...

You're on /. and haven't read LOTR??

Translation:

You're on /. and you're not a VIRGIN??

And the inevitable follow-up:

Er, wot's that? I've read LOTR twenty-eight times, that once every year since my 12th birthday, and I'm certainly no virgin...I've gotten laid twice in fact...once by a hot "Ensign Ro" bird at a Trek convo, another time by an "Akane" at a cosplay...what's so funny?...no I'm not really British, I just say "wot" and "bird" and "convo" naturally...cheers!

Please let this not suck

[timeOday]

I cringed during the CGI sequences of "Attack of the Clones." I really liked Lord of the Rings. Please let this new scene be a breakthrough and not an embarrasing distraction.

Diagram of Helm's Deep battle

[Allen Varney]

The Two Towers Visual Companion [barnesandnoble.com], a movie tie-in, features a nice four-page foldout illustrating the battle's progress. (N.B. The book's foreword, by Viggo Mortensen (who played Aragorn), is worth a read. Maybe I'm a bigot, but I hadn't expected an actor's commentary to be so perceptive and nuanced.)

Re:Diagram of Helm's Deep battle

[bravehamster]

Maybe I'm a bigot, but I hadn't expected an actor's commentary to be so perceptive and nuanced.)

Do yourself a favor and go buy the 4 disc version of FoTR. Find a time when you have 7 hours to spare and watch the last two discs. Viggo is "an old school actor, a gentleman" as some of the others refer to him. This is a guy that takes his craft very, very seriously. That guy impressed the hell outta me, moreso even than Ian McKellan or Christopher Lee. And that's saying quite a lot. He's intelligent, soft-spoken, and cares about what he does. When's the last time you saw an actor like that?

Re:Diagram of Helm's Deep battle

[Chris Brewer]

And don't forget that he was called in when they were already shooting. The original actor was cast "too young". Which if my calculations are correct, Aragorn is supposed to be at least in his 50s - going on the basis of the Story of Arwen and Aragorn (in the appendix). After being in NZ for two days he had to shoot Weathertop.

The originally cast actor (I refuse to name him - he appeared in Queen of the Damned if you must know) has said in an interview that Wellington is the arsehole of the world (No Karma for guessing where I am), but he says he's "not bitter."

For those who haven't bought/watched the appendencies of the extended version: after talking on the phone to PJ, he wasn't sure about whether to do it or not, but his son Henry said something like "OMG, they want you to be Aragorn, and you're thinking about it???". Henry was also responsible for checking that Thror Oakenshield's map is still around for Gandalf to look at.

Re:Diagram of Helm's Deep battle

[Coryoth]

And don't forget that he was called in when they were already shooting. The original actor was cast "too young". Which if my calculations are correct, Aragorn is supposed to be at least in his 50s - going on the basis of the Story of Arwen and Aragorn (in the appendix). After being in NZ for two days he had to shoot Weathertop.

Well, that's the official line, yes. I believe in reality it had rather more to do with the original actor blowing up mailboxes in the neighborhood in Wellington he was staying in.

Jedidiah

interesting

[selectspec]

"...you can still usually tell when something is synthetic. But we'll soon be crossing over into a time where that's not possible."

I think we're pretty close to this already. I remember watching the sept 11 planes hitting the towers and thinking it looked "fake" like a movie, simply because it was too incredible believe.

Re:interesting

[RedWizzard]

I agree. I noticed that a lot of the people who complained that the CG in Fellowship was bad were only complaining about the bits that had to be CG - the cave troll, gollum, the eagle. Most of the CG went completely unnoticed because it was so seamless and realistic.

Re:The better point ...

[ZaMoose]

Yeah, it was almost like some bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie [theonion.com], wasn't it?

Re:The better point ...

[Soulslayer]

That issue of the Onion is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my entire life. I remember when it first came out.

I mean yes, those guys have done a wonderful job of producing biting satire for years, but to tackle a subject that sensitive so soon after the event itself was something no one in their right minds would do. And yet The Onion managed to find small glimmers of dark dark humour in an otherwise depressing event while still paying great respect to those that lost their lives and not feeling like an attempt to wring attention out of a horrible event.

Using humour to pay respect to a tragedy like Sept 11th is an enormous challenge. The Onion made it looks easy.

I found this article in particular to be a perfect balance of the two: God Angrily Clarifies "Don't Kill" Rule [theonion.com].

From the article...

[M.C. Hampster]

Regelous' laptop still contains an early sequence in which a pair of fighters--an Orc and a human--began a strange dance borne of too-finely balanced combat and obstacle avoidance modules.

This kind of reminds me of the middle-school "proms" we would have at graduation.

I felt nothing in the Ep 1 battle

[bugnuts]

In the star wars episode 1 big battle, it looked like a bunch of CGI fighting more CGI. Granted part were robots, but they all looked robotic. I felt nothing, and it was due to the obvious cgi and actions.

Sounds like Massive may do it right, assuming the graphics and actions are both believable. This sounds to be quite promising!

Did You Feel Anything in LOTR FoTR?

[FreeUser]

In the star wars episode 1 big battle, it looked like a bunch of CGI fighting more CGI. Granted part were robots, but they all looked robotic. I felt nothing, and it was due to the obvious cgi and actions.

Did you feel anything in the opening sequence of the Fellowship of the Ring, at the battle where Isildur cut the ring from Sauron's hand? If so, that would confirm your evaluation of massive (at least for yourself), and would quite frankly agree with mine.

OTOH Star Wars I and II were without feeling for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the computer animation and special effects, and everything to do with terrible writing, mediocre directing, and wooden delivery ... something I doubt any of the LOTR movies suffer from, but I digress. :-)

Re:I felt nothing in the Ep 1 battle

[dswensen]

In the star wars episode 1 big battle, it looked like a bunch of CGI fighting more CGI. Granted part were robots, but they all looked robotic. I felt nothing, and it was due to the obvious cgi and actions.

Yeah, and in Empire Strikes Back all the AT-ATs look to me like models that are being clumsily animated with stop-motion, and Jabba looks like a puppet whose lips don't match the words, and there are big dark grey boxes aroung all the TIE fighters.

But my imagination took up the slack. I don't know where the idea came from that CGI is somehow supposed to supplant the moviegoing imagination. I think, ironically, it's because the effects look very close to realistic, but not 100% indistinguishable. Perhaps if they looked worse, the audience's imagination could fill in the gaps, but I doubt that will work anymore -- the audience simply expects too much.

No, the battle in Episode I is not easily mistaken for the "real" thing -- but it wouldn't have been any more convincing, IMHO, if it were a dozen guys running around in rubber Gungan suits as squibs go off all around. (Although it probably would have been funnier, at the very least.)

So, no. CGI isn't perfect. Special effects have limitations. They always have. I don't know why, all of a sudden, they're expected not to.

Yeah, still...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

<HUMOR>
We still need to get Jackson to rename the movie [petitiononline.com], because he's obviously trying to cash in on 9/11!
</HUMOR>

Re:Yeah, still...

[craenor]

Personally...I think they should change the title, "Return of the King". It's an afront to Elvis, the King never died, he doesn't have to return.

Slower than Doom III

[scotay]

A 50,000 character particle system would run slower than Doom III!!!

This Massive stuff will be slow on the fastest next-generation movie theater accelerators even with tons of memory.

When the credits are rolling, the frame rates might be okay, but in the battle scene I bet they drop to around 24fps.

Stop laughing... there might be some future here

[Goldenhawk]

After I stopped laughing at the parent post, I had to ask myself *when*, not *if*, this actually might be the way movie theaters work.

After all, if you can really generate a scene completely in software, it probably takes a LOT fewer bytes to describe it than the raw imagery. How big was the entire source material for Final Fantasy? I'd bet it was a LOT smaller than a fully-digital movie at full theater resolution.

Taken to its logical conclusion, I wonder how far away the day will be when a "movie" as delivered to the studio is actually merely the script, along with a bunch of texture files, character maps, landscape grids, MIDI files, etc., essentially a huge .WAD file. I can easily see the day when a photorealistic movie could be generated solely by the computer.

To karma whore for a second, too, it's interesting to note that if the movie theater rendering system that drove this method were sufficiently more advanced than the average user's home PC, it would make it completely impossible to pirate a digital movie on a 1-for-1 basis - you'd only be able to capture the rendered film, and have a much larger digital file to handle. What a bonus for the movie industry that could be.

A final thought about this idea. Assuming that the hardware in each theater were not identical, and even if they were, it's entirely likely that each time the film were projected (hence rendered then projected), it would be slightly different. Hmmm.

Re:Slower than Doom III

[Chris Brewer]

Where's the mod for "Hook, Line, and Sinker"?

...vast hordes...

[Embedded Geek]

vast hordes of eager filmgoers will mob cineplexes across the land...

Forget your piddly 100K of Orcs. I can't wait to see the CGI scene showing that horde charging the theatres!!

Watch out for the cellphone user in TT though

[chopkins1]

I found it rather amusing that one of the quotes from this story says, "...keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone."

Waldo?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is, Where's Waldo?

warning....if you like LOTR & ST don't look he

[nebenfun]

my friends,
This is my last post of slashdot. After seeing this [mac.com], I have decided that life is not worth living. I loved Star Trek and Tolkien and then this [mac.com] happened.
Doing the real ctrl-alt-del,
nbfn
This is a real site...
not goat stuff

Re:warning....if you like LOTR & ST don't look

[Stormie]

I saw an entire tech company destroyed by that video. Someone mailed it around the office and reduced all the programmers to gibbering drooling idiots, incapable of ever writing another line of code.

Re:warning....if you like LOTR & ST don't look

[vicviper]

When Yoda was babbling on about fear, *this* is what he was talking about.

Re:warning....if you like LOTR & ST don't look

[simetra]

Actually, it's a pretty catchy tune.

I might actually see Twin Towers now, just to hear that theme song again.

More information on WETA and their infrastructure

[CrackHappy]

Here is an interesting article [digitalanimators.com] which addresses some of WETA's other issues in creating the film, and talks a little about their uses of Linux as their core OS.

Cell Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone

Don't people ever learn? How many more people have to die before we stop using our cell phones during battle?

Dr. Sims Studies Virtual Battle

[Vegan Pagan]

Is it just a coincidence that the biggest set of virtual humans in movie history is studied by a guy called Sims?

The End of the Sims

[DeadBugs]

Maybe in a few years when the Sims Online has run it's course, they can integrate the "Massive" program and have a huge battle at the end.

I would pay to see that.

The end of CGi and back to stories...

[dargaud]

Yesterday I went and saw James Bond. There was a whole bunch of action movie previews (including LOTR) before that, where you could (barely) tell that all the action sequences were CGI... And I thought that now that they can do basically anything with CGI we are going to go back to good story lines to distinguish movies. No more 'the story was so-so but the effects where great'. Now that all the movies have effects for anything (explosions, fights, monsters, impossible scenes, dead actors...) they won't be able to do better only based on the effects. The newer Star Wars proved that. As effects become more commonspread and cheaper, I hope the money goes to the (good) story writers.

Automated crowd scenes

[Animats]

CG effects people have been doing this sort of thing for a while, and it's been getting steadily better. Early attempts include the penguin army in one of the Batman movies, and the baby 'zillas in Godzilla. Back when I was doing Falling Bodies in 1997, another startup did KinemaWay, which was a particle-based system for crowd scenes, done as a plug-in for Softimage|3D. Worked OK, but the market is so tiny that it's hard to make any money selling such a thing as a software package. Motion Factory did something a bit more powerful as a game engine, but that engine was used for Prince of Persia 3D and not heard from again. Recently, it's resurfaced as a part of Softimage|XSI, selling for $40K.

So far, the characters driven by these systems don't have real physics. They're mostly canned animation sequences being keyed by a state machine. Often, the moves are motion-captured and blended; otherwise they're created by animators. It's more of an automated cut-and-paste at the motion level than general motion generation as in robotics. The motions generated wouldn't necessarily work in the real world, but from a distance, they look good.

Incidentally, doing software for Hollywood is a pain. Hollywood film projects have two modes. Either the project is in development hell and they don't have any money but want freebies. Or the project is in production and there's plenty of money but no time.

The sickness of glorifying war

[David Wong]

I for one look to the day when nations can resolve their differences with such software rather than actual warfare.

There is no excuse for sacrificing young lives when a simple computer simulation would show the world exactly how the USA would kick their asses deeply into the dirt.

Re:I only hope.....

[lvdrproject]

Name an instance where a converted-from-the-novel movie was accurate, please. I've been watching movies my whole life, and i've yet to see one. As for LOTR, it was more accurate than most novels-to-movies i've seen.

:Lav

Re:I only hope.....

[mrjive]

FYI:

This [imdb.com] is the list of all the known inconsistencies in FotR. Some of them are actually quite simple and some are rather amusing.

Re:I only hope.....

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It's like in Saving Private Ryan when the medic gets shot in the kidney and starts spurting strawberry syrup, when anyone who's looked into human anatomy could have told them what a kidney wound should look like. They just about killed what should have been a very good scene by not buying a .25$ thing of brown food coloring.

Uh... the kidneys are positively packed full of arterial blood. When wounded in the kidney, one does, for all practical purposes, spew strawberry syrup. Arterial blood is a bright, almost improbable, red. Like stop-sign red, or fire-engine red.

Girlfriend's a surgical resident. She brings home snapshots of her operations on the digital camera. When she did a trauma surgery rotation, one of the injuries she had to treat was a kidney lac. Strawberry syrup was everywhere.

Re:I only hope.....

[jmo_jon]

Girlfriend's a surgical resident. She brings home snapshots of her operations on the digital camera.

Sounds cozy. Do you watch them in front of an open fire drinking wine?

Re:I only hope.....

[Phil Wilkins]

Do you watch them in front of an open fire drinking wine?

A nice chianti would seem appropriate...

Re:I only hope.....

[Twirlip of the Mists]

My bad, the wound was to the liver, not the kidney. From what I've read and seen it should have been dark, almost black.

You read wrong. Liver lacs are just like kidney lacs; they positively spew arterial blood, because of the dense vascularization of the organ. Now the liver produces bile, but it doesn't actually contain bile. Bile is held in the gall bladder, but only a very small quantity of it. And it's a pale, translucent green, not black at all.

If you have a bowel perforation, it's possible for fecal matter to leak out into the belly, and from the belly out through an open wound or incision. But that's kinda... well, it looks kinda like tiny nuggets of mud embedded in blood or bile. It's not really black, either.

Realistic depictions of serious injuries are really not that interesting to look at; everything is one color, the bright red of arterial blood, and one texture, the texture of raw meat.

Re:I only hope.....

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The dead orc still looks up when steped on.

Who says he's dead? He's just disabled and bleeding to death.

The arrow counts are still way off.

If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, even the book says that Legolas picked up orc and goblin arrows along the way. Besides, if you sat through the movie counting the arrows, I think it's possible that you might have missed the point.

The size of the hobbits still keeps changing.

Yeah, and in episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a (heh heh) magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

Of course it seems I'm a troll for even thinking that there could be anything wrong with these movies.

Hee hee. I get it! Lord of the Rings! Troll! Brilliant!

(-1, Hobbit)

(-1, hobbit)

[StandardDeviant]

Wouldn't that only be -1/2? :)

Re:I only hope.....

[Twirlip of the Mists]

When the guy has three arrows left and he shots five times, I cry foul.

Cry all you like. The underlying point of my previous post was that movies (and, by the same token, Itchy and Scratchy) are meant to be enjoyed. They're positively riddled with continuity errors as a result of the way they're made. So what?

Here, just to really get you excited, I'll throw you a couple of bones. During Boromir's death scene, his right hand appears and disappears from Aragorn's left shoulder about a million times. Or how about the magic disappearing pony? Or the way Merry and Pippin keep changing places during the scene in the inn?

None of these things detracts from the story, friend. Not a one of them. They're not important, they're not insightful; hell, they're not even really mistakes as much as they are harmless side-effects of the movie-making process.

Oh, and whatever you do, stay away from the climactic scene of Return of the Jedi. The smudges on Vader's helmet will no doubt send you into a fit of apoplexy.

Re:Peter Jackson You Rock!

[Captain Large Face]

Just after the four Hobbits get past the watchman in Bree, on their way to the Pracing Pony, Peter Jackson appears on the right hand side of the screen, and announces his presence with a lovely belch.

Re:didn't we see this already?

[jericho4.0]

Yes it was, but the original link was to a scanned image of a Popular Science article. This one is to Popular Sciences website. For some reason, this make it news again.

Re:I can't wait for this!

[prockcore]

Who needs Star Wars, real geeks know what they love! And it's not Luca, let me tell you!

My name is Lucas.. I created Episode 4. I live upstairs from you. I think you worshipped me before.

A Bonk with the Clue-bat

[FreeUser]

RTFA. Massive isn't open-source and their is no mention of what hardware they used either.

The software is running on a cluster of GNU/Linux boxes. That is what he is likely referring to, and while this article may make no reference to the operating system, device drivers, libraries, and compilers used both to compile Massive itself, and to support the cluster upon which its renders run, it is well documented in any number of places, findable by google [google.com], and such common knowledge by most who read slashdot that he probably didn't feel the need to elucidate further.

The growth of GNU/Linux in Hollywood, the financial industry (in which I work), and any number of other areas of serious computational endeavor is indeed a very big victory for free software and open source, and a glaring black eye for the likes of Microsoft. One of free software's strongest advantages is the way it facilitates rapid development, maintenance, and long term stability of in-house software (by avoiding things like coerced upgrades, arbitrarilly moving API targets, shoddy infrastructure, poor security, and other such costly and detrimental things that Microsoft & Co. are so well known for).

To answer the question

[friday2k]

It runs on Irix and Massive is being ported to Linux. Quote: From the beginning of preproduction, Weta Digital has also used the IRIX OS-based Octane visual workstations to write extensions to Maya and create proprietary technology. This technology includes Massive, a custom-built crowd animation or "artificial ecology" system developed on IRIX and now ported to Linux that draws from a huge database of motion-capture data. (see here [sgi.com]).

Re:I like this movie and all, but where are the

[Chris Brewer]

Actors of colour? I hardly think that a species where an entire gender is missing doesn't classify as being "of colour".

Or do you have something against the Ents?

But if you're being serious, there's Irish representation here. And the Irish are pretty colourful.

Re:I like this movie and all, but where are the

[Elentar]

Anyone who has read Tolkien's works with half an eye open for cultural stereotypes was probably surprised at how much of the real world pops out in them.

It is important to understand that Tolkien was raised in a different culture, before racial equality (as opposed to simple racial tolerance) began to be accepted and widespread. I love his books as much as ever, and I can appreciate that he was writing using the cultural ideas of the time. It is not that he wished to be racist - but rather, he had learned that his readers would expect evil to be physically apparent in the form of dark skin and short stature.

Middle Earth is comprised of vast lands between the ever-shining light of the Uttermost West and the dark, lost lands of the East. Also, because the Elves travelled over the northern ice to reach Middle Earth, the areas to the south are also considered less enlightened.

The populations of the southern lands are described as 'swarthy' and untrustworthy, and the further east you go the shorter, darker, and less civilized the peoples of Middle Earth (also known as Europe) become. It takes little effort to realize that Numenor, from which the race of kings from which Aragorn is descended comes, is the Isle of Britain and that Eressea, the final stop before the Undying Lands, is Ireland.

In the Silmarillion, the world is bent from flat to spherical so that no mortal may ever sail the way to the divine lands again. So I'm not sure whether Valinor is America, or whether America is the easternmost land, furthest from the light and wisdom of the West.

-Elentar

Re:I like this movie and all, but where are the

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Or maybe there just weren't than many 'coloured' people back in ancient england/euorpe where the story was set in.

Re:Did you know...

[BasharTeg]

Yeah, but by the time my turn comes around on the XDCC list and I finish receiving it at 1.05 kilobytes per second, the DVD will be out, ordered, delivered, and playing on my television.