| Lord Of the Rings - Weta’s MASSIVE Crowd |
Yesterday night I went to see Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers with my friend Eyal. We also wanted our friend Ami to come as he’s just got a weekend at home from the hospital (he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident) but it turns out the cinema and the mall have no facilities for wheelchairs. I was so pissed on this I really yelled at the girl who answered the phone. I kinda regretted it after a while since she wasn’t the right address but I just got really pissed about this.
Anyway, to the movie. It was splendid - an epic proportion adventure! The scenes are breathtaking! As a Computer Graphics guy myself I must say that I was REALLY impressed by the CG - Which in most part were hard to detect! Beside the totally imaginative characters (Treeants (Treebeard), Gollum, Hellwolves (wargs)) all the rest looked practically as real as it could! Amazing! Just when I thought - here is a CGI character - it turned out to be (or look like) a man in a mask. I was totally immense in the movie. Even the CG characters themselves (Gollum / Smeagol specially) were really one level above anything I’ve seen till now. The interaction between the CG Gollum and the other “real” actors was amazing. I later found out that for some of the shots they had to totally model and digitised all the human actors up to the little details to create believable interaction scenes. I admit right now - I could not tell which scenes were these! Maybe if I’ll have the movie in the lab and watch it very closely - but it was totally believable in the theatre!
But I want to dedicate this post to one impressive system created for the movie - Weta’s MASSIVE Crowd system.
Popular Science published a really interesting article about the system that moves the armies, developed in-house by Weta (the CGI company hired for the movie):
“Until recently, relatively simple simulations of physical interactions have driven digital crowd sequences. Using basic rules governing attraction and repulsion, designers aimed single points called particles at each other. Each particle represents a different individual, and when a satisfactory mix is achieved to portray the movements of a group or crowd, animation is added: The particle is rendered as a digital human or creature. The result is cost-effective but not always natural-looking; particle trajectories emulate pool-table-level physics across a two-dimensional space. The movement of real people, especially in battle over rough terrain, is a hugely more complex challenge for the programmer.
Influenced by artificial life theorists like MIT’s Sims, and a student of medieval battles, Regelous spent the next several years writing Massive, a software program that generates crowds whose interaction is based not on particle dynamics but on unique and unpredictable choices made by individual characters within a scene. Rather than concentrating on duplicating mechanical actions, Massive endows each character with a digital brain and gives it the power to act completely on its own. In an AI sense, the characters fighting in Helm’s Deep are, well, fighting.
This approach means much less reliance on cutting and pasting (the initially impressive Colosseum crowd in Gladiator was made by duplicating and digitally tweaking 200 human extras; viewed carefully, the carbon copy spectators can create a disconcerting effect). Massive was built on the understanding that the believability of a cast of thousands depends on the actions of individuals. “If (one Orc) acts naturally,” Regelous says, “so will the group.”
When Orc meets elf in digital battle, neither knows exactly what he or his opponent is going to do. The elf may swing his sword, but when? His opponent will see it and duck (or not, and not). The elf jumps forward. The Orc cowers and this time, the elf’s blow finds bone. While the result of the whole battle is broadly predetermined there is a plot individual sequences have what might be called programmed spontaneity. Each movement emerges from the one before it.”
Links:
The article on Popular Science website
A Scan of the article from PopSci paper magazine
WetaFX site
A discussion on Slashdot
The role of Maya in creating LOTR CGI
CGImag review of the CG
Images:
Molding miniatures
4 Comments so far
Leave a reply
look, you said u went to see the film, u cld at least have put the correct names for everything in your article. gullum is called gollum and it is also smeagol and treeant is actually called treebeard and the hellwolves are called wargs, if you actually watched the film properly you wld have known this and if you actually enjoyed it like u said and were a fan, u wld have known the real names - sounds like youre just trying to pretend you know the film when it is obvious tht u dont…………
I accept your corrections regarding spelling mistakes but since I like the movie more for awesome Computer Graphics work (as you can tell since the post is about it and not about the movie) then for the plot. I prefer the books for that - which I read in hebrew, btw, a long time ago.
You don’t seems to be that much of a speller yourself with sentences starting with "u cld" and "u wld". Mistakes like writing "Gullum" instead of "Gollum" are pretty small compared to that. Now, my primery language is Hebrew. What is YOUR excuse?
I found your article out of curiosity. It is a very informative piece and I appreciate you taking the time to present the rest of us with it. Don’t worry about the non-spelling halfwit who believes he must correct everyone just to feel better about himself. Your doing just fine dude.
Come quit being pesimestes great stuff do you know where i can download it? dude i’m signing out
Bye!