Massive (software)

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.

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 graphics processing unit (GPU) based hardware rendering. Massive Software can 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.

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. Rumor has it that when the first battle was programmed, each fighter "saw" the battle scene and promptly turned and fled. However this was not due to "fear" of battle, but due to a programming error that forced the agent to run until it encountered an enemy. As the armies involved were so large, the agents that "ran away" could not sense the presence of the intended enemies, and ran in an attempt to act out their programming.

Since then, it has evolved into a complete product and has been licensed by many other visual effects houses.

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"
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*"King Kong" (Jackson 2005)
*" Flags of our Fathers" (besides battle and crowd scenes, even shots of seacraft crossing the Pacific were created with Massive)
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*"I, Robot
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*"Blades of Glory"
*"Eragon"
*"Happy Feet"
*"300"
*"The Ant Bully" (the first film to use computer animated characters as Massive agents rather than motion capture. Also first to use facial animation within Massive)
*"Doctor Who" ("Partners in Crime" is the first example of Massive used in television.)

ee also

*Crowd simulation
*Fuzzy logic
*Emergence
*NetLogo - multi-agent programming language and integrated modelling environment
*Maya (software)

External links

* [http://www.massivesoftware.com/ Official site of Massive Software]
* [http://www.wetadigital.com/ Official site of Weta Digital]

Educational Partners

*Americas

**Ringling School Of Art & Design - Sarasota, FL http://www.ringling.edu/

**Savannah College Of Art & Design - Savannah, GA http://www.scad.edu/

**Gnomon School Of Visual Effects - Hollywood, CA http://www.gnomonschool.com/

**USC School of Cinematic Arts - Los Angeles, CA http://www-cntv.usc.edu/

**Coastal Carolina University - Conway, SC http://www.coastal.edu/

**Drexel University - Philadelphia, PA http://www.drexel.edu/

*Europe

**Bournemouth University - Dorset, United Kingdom National Centre for Computer Animation http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/

**University of Teesside - Middlesbrough, United Kingdom School of Computing http://www-scm.tees.ac.uk/

*Asia Pacific

**Media Design School - Auckland, New Zealand http://www.mediadesign.school.nz/

**Kasetsart University - Chatuchak, Bangkok http://www.ku.ac.th/aboutku/english/