Article about The Lord of the Rings MASSIVE Crowd

TheOneRing.net has posted an article going indepth about LotR CGI, and specifically the rendering of extremely large crowds being done byWETA Digital. With the special edition due out soon, and TTT coming out in december, well let's just leave it at "Yay".

Comments

Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the massive cock ring!

Lord of the Rings!!!

Re:Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

First post for all the Mexicans in the house!

Support the Brown Wave!

Make America brown by the year 2050.

Re:Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can always rely on me;
I've got the power, I've got the speed"

LOTR ROCKS

[ELiTeUI]

That is all i have to say.

LOTR: TTT

[Anonymous Coward]

What?
Lord Of The Rings: Tekken Tag Tournament?

sounds fun, but can we be Gandalf and use magic?

woo

[lamery]

Scanned pages from a magazine... god bless the internet.

When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[phusnikn]

Pixar needs to start doing more adult level CG stuff they do such great work but there stuff is mostly appealing to young kids..

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[ozmodier]

yeah, where's my CGI (pixar quality) pr0n?

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[Anonymous Coward]

we just want to see the

ASS-to-ASS!!!
ASS-to-ASS!!!
ASS-to-ASS!!!

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[D iz a n k Meister]

Yeah, I would like to see a really hot CG Shannon Tweed style psychological thriller, you know where the fly-ass shrink/sex therapist can't stop banging everyone.

But I also think they could make some bad ass gun-fu scenes with this stuff. Stuff that would shame The Matrix. And explosions, lots of cool explosions.

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[lingqi]

Not trolling, but the parent post touches on an interesting point.

You can use fuzzy logic to govern group-battles. By the same line of reasoning, it shoud be similarly probable to use the said engines to govern "actors" and "actresses" in pornographic productions.

I suppose it will just take some time for the price of this sort of computing to come down to the porn-budget, or for people to make porn with such high budget that they will be able to do this.

I would not be surprised if the exact same kind of setup / method is used to generate CGI pornography several years down the line.

Have to wonder, though - will the /. community cheer the said production similarly? ;^)

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[mikeybee]

I would not be surprised if the exact same kind of setup / method is used to generate CGI pornography several years down the line.

10,000 orcs getting it on? Don't know if it'd get me reaching for the moisturiser...

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[danger42]

Actually, this was done already in a major motion picture: Eyes Wide Shut. The orgy scenes in the manor included some CGI-created people f*cking. Unfortunately, most of hte effects were removed prior to the film's release to obtain an R rating.

Re:When will Pixar make a non G rated Movie

[malducin]

No, the people having sex were real. What happened for ther US release is that they composited this people in the way so that it wouldn't be so graphic. You can spot like a few couples that don't move stratigically placed here and there.

The worst part was that they claimed Kubrick wanted it that way, but if that was the case then why did the European version didn't have that "censoring"?

LOTR topic on /.

[Xpilot]

C'mon CmdrTaco. We need one :)

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[Dr_Cornholio]

Yeah, One Topic To Rule Them All!

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[6odm]

How about topic("tolkien"), or topic("middle earth"). The Hobbit, and Silmarillion is going to be filmed if LotR succeeds.

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[TMacPhail]

Is there any doubt in your mind that LOTR is going to succeed?

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[screwballicus]

One Ring to rwho them all
One Ring to find them
One Ring to ping them all
And in the darkness ypbind them

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah --- I reckon Frodo is going to succeed.

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[MrBlint]

Spoiler!

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Misinformation, more like.

(Oh, fuck, I'm a LotR weenie)

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[Masami Eiri]

Silmarilion as a movie? That book made my head hurt...

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[jhoffoss]

Just curious...how much karma have you whored by posting this under every LOTR posting? ;)

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[weatherbee]

The Hobbit, and Silmarillion is going to be filmed if LotR succeeds.

The Hobbit will probably get done, but the film rights to The Silmarillion were never sold, and might never be sold. (In fact, I saw a link there on theonering.net the other day about a musical adaptation of The Silmarillion being cancelled due to "copyright issues".)

I don't think Christopher Tolkien will sell those rights.

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[Vinnie_333]

The Silmarillion can barely be read, let alone filmed!

Re:LOTR topic on /.

[Gunnery Sgt. Hartman]

I agree. How hard would it be to find a picture of "The Ring" to use?

Ha ha, CmdrTaco's wife miscarried

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

Fomentatious perflation hydrogenates your foetal cisterna
Coagulating haemorrhage and your congenital hernia

Dehydrated soup - crumbling hygroma
Pectified sludge - dank, acrid aroma
Clotting uteral mucus, dissipating your foetus
Melting your uterus and evaporating your cyesis

Your foetus is reconstituted by warm, molten enzymes
Slowly digested in a microwaved slime
Your stomach is churning, heat effervescing your succus
Your innards running like hot, sticky mucus

Mangled uterogestation, your perimetrium clots
Your inside cooking, steaming and hot

Re:Ha ha, CmdrTaco's wife miscarried

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot Joke

Rob Malda and Kathleen Fent are at the hospital, Kathleen is giving birth. Surprise, the child is black. Rob says "It's obvious I cheated you, I'm sorry honey".

Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[SirSlud]

Cause thats how I determine what movie I wanna see; the crowds! Spend millions on crowds. Millions, I tell you!

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, much bigger crowds. These are truely MASSIVE folks. They live on pork rinds, peppermint ice cream, and LoTR (in that order). They are approaching the size of a house, each.

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is to do big battle scens on the cheap. Nothing worse than seeing alleged armies on screen being represented by 5 guys and a dog

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[Myco]

Anyone who makes a Monty Python joke out of this will be sacked.

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[_ph1ux_]

Computer-Geek:
Oh, I'm a computer-geek and I'm OK,
I code all night and I troll all day.

PHBs:
He's a lumberjack and he's OK,
He codes all night and he trolls all day.

Computer-Geek: (sings)
I code new bugs, I drink my jolt,
I go to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays I go fragging,
And have SCSI drives for speed.

PHBs: (sing)
He codes new bugs, he drinks his jolt,
He goes to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays he goes fragging,
And has SCSI drives for speed.

Computer-Geek/PHBs: (sing)
I'm/He's a Computer-geek and I'm/he's OK,
I/He code/codes all night and I/he
sleep/sleeps all day.

Computer-geek: (sings)
I code new features, I get first post,
I like to browse for porn.
I chat on EFnet as a girl,
And search the personals.

PHBs: (sing)
He codes new features, he skips and jumps,
He likes to browse for porn.
He chats of EFnet as a girl?,
And searches the personals ... ?

Computer-Geek/PHBs: (sing)
I'm/He's a Computer-geek and I'm/he's OK,
I/He code/codes all night and I/he
sleep/sleeps all day.

Computer-geek: (sings)
I troll slashdot, I wear three phones,
an Ipod and a Palm.
I wish I had some hot grits,
and insightful Karma mods!

PHBs: (sing)
He trolls Slashdot, he wears three phones,
an Ipod ... and a Palm?

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[SirSlud]

>Nothing worse than seeing alleged armies on screen being represented by 5 guys and a dog.

Shit yeah, I'd hate to have to call upon my imagination. Have we perfected surgically removing imaginations now that they've been rendered obsolete?

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[Wolfrider]

(paraphrase) "...and they came to a humongous wall that was covered by the blood of a thousand virgins, and a dog. And thusly they spake, We shall avenge the dog."
.

Re:Whoa, bigger crowds that before?!

[Wolfrider]

"--The producers of this thread would like to apologise to you, the audience, for the previous post. The person(s) responsible have been sacked.

--And now for something COMPLE-"

@#%@#$^NO CARRIER
.

They have a MASSIVE CGI system...

[Toasty16]

...but they still can't make Frodo look like a guy.

Re:They have a MASSIVE CGI system...

[D iz a n k Meister]

"Oh, Sam!"

Re:They have a MASSIVE CGI system...

[Cyno01]

no, not Troll, hes a Hobbit, get it right

Re:They have a MASSIVE CGI system...

[pVoid]

HA hah...

Find Waldo among 100.000 other people...

Umm... hmmm... I mean Frodo.

Re:They have a MASSIVE CGI system...

[sharkey]

...can't make Frodo look like a guy

It's the strawberry-scented bubble-bath. It keeps his skin so soft!

WHAT?!

[packeteer]

I thought they really just used a bunch of actors. Of course they didn't REALLY use elves but damn now i feel let down.

Re:WHAT?!

[Timesprout]

Damn, I thought they just used a bunch of unemployed dot commers...

Re:WHAT?!

[Anonymous Coward]

we are all individuals

Re:WHAT?!

[ayjay29]

I'm not.

Re:WHAT?!

[Crosis]

Nah, they used students from nearby universities. A couple of my friends are in the scene at the start of LOTR:FOTR.

Re:WHAT?!

[D iz a n k Meister]

Actually, I'm the set of all sets.

Is that stolen concept or what?

Re:WHAT?!

[worthb]

I thought they really just used a bunch of actors. Of course they didn't REALLY use elves

In fact, the only creatures that aren't cgi are the Trolls. The found that there was such an abundance of them hanging out on a certain on-line news site that it was cheaper to hire them as extras than to render them.

lotr is great

[GoatPigSheep]

Nice to see CGI graphics being pushed to the next level.

LOTR is exciting, uses lots of CGI and the geek factor is high. I really can't wait untill the twin towers. When Hollywood makes great movies like this the whole MPAA trying to take away our rights thing doesn't sound so bad...

Re:lotr is great

[rodgerd]

This ain't aHollywood film in any meaningful sense. The main Hollywood thing about it is New Line having the sense to stay the fuck out of Peter Jackson's way.

Re:lotr is great

[MikeFM]

I'll see the movie.. probably several times. I'll buy the DVD.. and probably at least one collectors edition.. and probably the complete set when all the movies are out.. but I'll still copy the DVD's, play them in Linux, and burn DiVX versions so I don't risk tearing up my originals. I might even get really evil and give a copy to a friend now and then or play it in a public place without paying a licence fee.

Re:lotr is great

[malducin]

It's funny how the double standard works. LOTR uses heavy amounts of CG to create CG crowds, when arguably they could have filmed with extras in costumes and makeup (even just a few and replicated and composited to create a crowd), and is heralded by many, but have Lucas do the same with the Clones and many complaing about the fakeness, coldness, overkill, or some other nonesense by many others.

He can't win can he ;-).

Next up is the discussion of CG Golum vs. CG Yoda.

Re:lotr is great

[Anonymous Coward]

To heck with the MPAA! There's a copy of The Twin Towers available for download RIGHT NOW at http://goatse... no, I can't do it. I'd burn in hell.

Re:lotr is great

[fredrik70]

The main Hollywood thing about it is New Line having the sense to stay the fuck out of Peter Jackson's way.

Isn't that fairly "un-Hollywood" ????

Re:lotr is great

[Anonymous Coward]

Te problem with the CGI in Clones wasn't the crowd scense, it was the close up stuff with actors having to react to things that weren't there and failing, badly.

When it came to Gollum they had an actor on set and just wiped over him with the CGI Gollum

Re:lotr is great

[hcduvall]

Oh, the CGI in Clones was great.

They were talking about the actors.

Re:lotr is great

[doi]

It's funny how the double standard works. LOTR uses heavy amounts of CG to create CG crowds, when arguably they could have filmed with extras in costumes and makeup (even just a few and replicated and composited to create a crowd)

ILM has done this (not Lucas AFAIK) in The Mummy Returns, and it looked terrible. They shot about 50 guys on horseback and cloned them into something like 8000. They also did CGI versions of the Anubis warrior swarms, they weren't a helluva lot better, but they were more consistent and beliveable.

[WETA] is heralded by many, but have Lucas do the same with the Clones and many complaing about the fakeness, coldness, overkill, or some other nonesense by many others.

George Lucas's philosophy is more about the fact that he CAN do something, not whether he SHOULD. He hates to shoot film because he cannot change it as easily as a digital image. He hates the traditional production process because he was always an editor first, a director second, third, fourth, hell, maybe even never. He lives in the editing room where the film is assembled, and if he wants to change something now he can call it up on the computer and just drop it in. He can change his mind 24 times a second and never have to commit to an idea or an image. For Christ's sake, he shoots with actors for a couple of hours, gets 4 or 5 takes, then has some CG plebe compositor spend days cutting and pasting one take's eyes over another take's nose over yet a third take's mouth, instead of SHOOTING ANOTHER TAKE and DIRECTING the actor to do it the way he wants! And the actors know this; it's no wonder the performances blow, they're not motivated to do better because they know George will just cut their heads off and paste it onto another body. The same applies to the fully CG characters; CG Yoda can jump and spin and slash with the best of them, but he can't evoke emotion because Frank Oz wasn't there on the set to provide it, and the other actors don't get the benefit of that feedback. Look back at Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi; for all their faults, they felt a lot more real because George & Co. had to do it for real, the old-fashioned way, and make a decision and stick with it.

Peter Jackson, OTOH, will do another take, or 10, to get the right performance from a real actor. He'll construct a (partial) set for them to perform in, instead of standing around a blue stage with blue cubes substituting for furniture. He'll have a stand-in or the real voice actor on stage to do the scene instead of having the actors look at a ping pong ball on a stick. He will push technology to deliver new images, but he will stick with an image that works and not change it because he can. He doesn't complain about shooting film or working on a year-long shooting schedule, or make elaborate, bullshit excuses for not doing something the old way, or self-aggrandizing statements about how he's changing the entire industry for the better. He has 100 times the respect for the art of filmmaking that George Lucas has, and won't abandon a perfectly good tradition simply because there's a new way to do something.

And think about this: by the time Episode III is done (2 years after LOTR is), the two trilogies will have cost about the same, but LOTR will also have a real STORY with real CHARACTERS played by real, talented, motivated ACTORS, something that CGI cannot deliver. Nor, it seems, George Lucas.

He can't win can he ;-).

Dunno, he seems to have the most toys, maybe they've been lying to us about that. :-)

And personally, I would've loved it if David Lean were still alive; he would've hired 100,000 extras in costumes and filmed it FOR REAL! :)

Re:lotr is great

[MyHair]

Score:4 Insightful? Okaaaaaaaayy...let me try:

I'll see the movie in the theater once or twice. I might even splurge and buy $5 popcorn and $3 Coke. But the second time I'll probably sneak in some outside food and drink. Most of the theater employees are paid too little to care; I just keep the drink low and to my side and no one even notices. I'll buy the DVD when it comes out, and I'll watch it once--including all the DVD extras, and then never watch the extras again and rarely watch the movie because I'll think "well, I own this and can watch it anytime...what's good on cable?"

Re:lotr is great

[bonch]

Well, compare the two. Clones' CG really was fake, cold, and overkill. LOTR used it as a necessary enhancement to the story.

So many scenes in Clones were obviously shot in front of blue screens. The directing was bland, and the whole movie felt farted out on an assembly line to me. "Stand the actors up like paper dolls in front of a screen; we'll finish the movie later on our computers."

Just my opinion.

Re:lotr is great

[95_gst_al]

Oh $hit! Somebody call Capcom and introduce the "LoTR VS Star Wars" idea. It will be in the arcades shortly after. :-)

Re:lotr is great

[fpp]

Hmmm, so the actors in the Star Wars films are responding to something isn't there, and that makes them bad actors? I guess there are no good stage actors then?

Re:lotr is great

[doi]

Hmmm, so the actors in the Star Wars films are responding to something isn't there, and that makes them bad actors? I guess there are no good stage actors then?

Ummmm, stage actors have an audience to react to. You have heard of the concept of an "audience" right? It's not the same as a camera crew either, and yes, I've done both stage and film/video work, I know what I'm talking about.

And when you have a good actor, like, say, Bob Hoskins, and you have a good director like, say, Robert Zemeckis, you end up with a movie like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where the actor is able to convince EVERYONE that the characters he's supposed to interact with are actually there. I've seen several stage actors perform who were also that compelling, that gripping, on stage, without any special effects or even props for that matter. Stage acting has always been better and more convincing than film acting. I only wish George Lucas would realize this and hire more stage actors and actually let them act.

Re:lotr is great

[Anonymous Coward]

My turn:

I'll see the movie exactly 13 times on opening day because a local theater is going to show it 13 times and what the hell, I have no life. 13 is an unlucky number for some but it's not for me so I think 13 will work out just dandy.

Watching it that many times will make me hungry and thirsty so I'll have to buy a soda for each showing and probably a hotdog or nachos but maybe I'll sneak in some beer, chips and salsa... or hell, maybe I'll grill a steak and sneak that in.

Then I'll buy the dvd when it first comes out before I find out that they are going to release a better version. Then I'll buy the better version and find out later that there is a collectors edition that comes with some bookends. So I'll buy that as well. Then I'll but the shirts, the lunch box, the trading cards, the posters, and all the other "cool" stuff that I can't live without. Then I'll go home and watch the movie 13 times a day for 13 days because it's beome some sort of ritual. Then I'll remember that I also own 4 different versions of the first LOTR and I'll have to watch that one as well. Then I'll sit there and wonder why the hell I have so many versions of the same fucking movie.

Come on lucky "4: Insightful"!!!

Re:lotr is great

[rodgerd]

I should have been clearer - the only Hollywood involvements is that New Line are funding/distributing the movie. And they have the sense to stay out of the way, other than that.

Re:lotr is great

[malducin]

Well my argument was about the techniques and not either specifi implementations, nor larger issues which are much more subjective like personal tastes on the directing or story (and which I agree that some people might like it as much as other despise it). Though I do agree,doing it the Lean way would be great. Too bad you now have to feed extras, and pay them and yadda yadda yadda ;-).

As far as crowds, I don't see what looked wrong with the replicated riders in Mummy 2, though I admit a lot of the Anubis warriors crowd shots were not good and can give you a lot of good reason for that. I f anything the biggest problem with the human army is that at the end you didn't see one dead body or anything ;-). But there have been many other examples. What about the crowds in the stadium in Episode 1, or the tons of CG crowds in Pearl Harbor?

My point was that some people complained that the clone troopers were CG when they could have been costumed extras. But not many complain that the orc armies could have also been costumed extras, hence the double standard.

As far as some of the comments. As far as Lucas I think he is really trailblazing the way of the future. How many people complained about the advent of color and sound. Same thing with non linear filmmaking. This is separate frmo saying he isn't very good at directing actors, which I do agree is a very valid complaint. Then again you have tons of directors that shoot the usual way and the performances are awful nonetheless. Does that imply that the usual way sucks? Of course not, just the same as nonlinear filmaking doesn't imply bad films. It's not like it's unprecedented, he pioneered and used it extensively in the Young Infy TV series.

As far as Yoda, Frank Oz personally wote a letter to thank Rob Coleman and the animators about the great job they did. He didn't have any regrets. He even said that he thought they shouldn't have copied some of his "mistakes" like the wobly ears. Besides it's the artist behind that imparts the life and emotion to a character, be it Oz with a rubber puppet or the ILM animators behind the computers. No need to disparage animators after all the computer is a tool (albeit a powerful one) and you need as much an good artist behind it as one operating a puppet.

As far as sets, well LOTR was inspired by the English countryside so yes you can get away with using eral environments. In the end Lucas is creating some vistas that almost don't exists anywhere. Lucas also had the standins present, Ahmed Best, Secombe, etc. so in essence Lucas and Jackson are using them the same.

As far as the film complaining, well don't pin it all on Lucas. James Cameron has done his own tests and wants to shoot the next in HD and is convinced, also Steven Soderberg and I believe also Robert Rodriguez. I'm not saying that digital surpases film in all aspects but to this directors and others HD is good enough for their style of shooting. Jackson, Spielberg and many others will stick for film for a long time if not forever. I never really read about Lucas "whinning" about film, but more explaining his point of view of using HD. Hardly surprising since many old school folk and critics just have flatly discounted HD. I haven't heard about any so called "elaborate excuses". At least that's the way I understood all the interviews I read. Besides you could argue the same with Jackson, what about those shots that had the CG camera syndrome of going anywhere (when the birds go inside Orthanc to Saruman). You could argue that is just showing off the tech or personal indulgence, as Jackson has stated that he wanted a rollercoaster ride feel for many of his shots. On the other hand most other VFX supervisors would avoid and use more traditional techniques to give the shot a bit more realism and not the motion ride feel. So would you say Jackson abandoned a tradition there, so Lucas has 100 times the respect of the art of filmaking? That's just a really low blow to Lucas withouit any justification. Both are great filmakers in my book, each with their cons and pros, which I could go on but I ranted enough.

In a certain way you proved my point ;-), though it was an interesting post you had there, even if I don't agree with some of it. Enough ranting peace!!!

should they have that on their site?

[NotAnotherReboot]

Are they allowed to be scanning pages from the magazine and just posting them online? Seems like Popular Science is losing magazine sales from this. Isn't this copyright infringement?

(I'm glad to see the article but I can't help but ask if they can legally put this up)

Re:should they have that on their site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question. Have they overstepped fair use, I personally don't think so but I am not a lawyer.

What would be cool is if someone photographed the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers exhibit in Toronto (runs till December) and elsewhere and posted what they thought of it. CGI is nice but them sets and props are also part of the magic.

Re:should they have that on their site?

[Gogo Dodo]

Well, let's take the /. morality test and see:

Does the article cover something of extreme interest to nerds? YES, duh! +2
Does the article cover somebody /. respects? WETA, yup, /. respects them. Hmmm... -2
Does the article cover some aspect that nobody knew about before? YES. +1
Is the article posted on a for-free fan site? YES. +1
Did the article come from an evil corporation? Popular Science is owned by AOL Time Warner and we all know how /. feels about them. YES. +5

That totals up to +7 (and I probably forgot a few things), so it doesn't matter if it's copyright infringement.

Re:should they have that on their site?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct, assuming that permission to post the article was never granted. Popular Science could argue (and probably successfully) that posting the scanned images goes beyond fair use because they post the entire article.

Will Popular Science ask them to take it down? Wait and see.

I'm willing to bet that Popular Science will realize that posting some scans of that one article to an audience of LOTR fans and geeks is far more likely to boost sales. If you are a regular Popular Science reader or subscriber, running across that web site will not cause you to take money back from Popular Science, and if you are not a regular reader, running across that web site is more likely to put Popular Science into your head and make you consider buying that copy.

I for one will go buy a copy of Popular Science at the grocery store about 8 hours from now, as a direct result of seeing those scans and reading a bit about the MASSIVE stuff. Makes we want to go beat out some OpenGL code.

Re:should they have that on their site?

[Masami Eiri]

I need to renew my subscription...

Re:should they have that on their site?

[medscaper]

Don't forget, you're not on any REGULAR moderation board, sonny.

Here, /math will see to it that those add up to -72 Offtopic.

Re:should they have that on their site?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL that is the funniest thing I have everseen, a post complaining about a post being offtopic as marked off topic!!!!!

Re:should they have that on their site?

[medscaper]

Well, it makes me happy to see that I can cause people to WASTE moderation points. Woo hoo! Mod THIS one down, too, will ya?

hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

me friends always told me i looked like an orc.

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the D is silent.

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. The D are anything but silent.

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

UNfortunately...

Off topic but of interest to the LOTR crowd...

[jerkychew]

Purchase some of the servers used to render the CGI in the first LOTR movie here.

Own a geeky piece of history!

Re:Off topic but of interest to the LOTR crowd...

[jdbo]

Purchase some of the servers used to render the CGI in the first LOTR movie here .

Own a geeky piece of history!


Damn you to the pits of Mordor!

I just bought 4 (more!) TTT action figures this evening, and thought that my geek-collector mania had hit a new low - and now I see this... this server... this precious server, yes... yes, yes my precious... precious, yes, mine, all of it, mine!...

Re:Off topic but of interest to the LOTR crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

If your buying it for historical or decorative purposes by all means however the price is a joke. $1,200US for a dual pIII 1G? Pass that crackpipe. I just dropped about the the same for two computers, and yes one was a 1U system (Netra AX1105-500 UltraSPARC IIe) and a 2.4G p4 with all sorts of cool stuff

Anonymous Cowards filtered. If their words aren't worth so much as a pen name why should I value them any more?

Re:Off topic but of interest to the LOTR crowd...

[nizo]

But do they have Tolkien ring network cards in them?

Re:Off topic but of interest to the LOTR crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the company I work for already picked up 3 or 4 of them off Weta a few months back - we already had a rack of 30 of the same model machines...

But think of the CHILDREN

[Anonymous Coward]

I have and the revolution looks good.

And it runs Lunis!!!11

[Anonymous Coward]

Taco is a MASSIVE wad of fuckbutter. Thanks for your support in tomorrows erection.

Pixar's stuff is better than most adult films!

[Artifice_Eternity]

They certainly blow most other "kid" movies out of the water (especially those by Disney, who funds them but can't compete with them creatively).

Spirited Away is the only "kid" movie I've seen in ages that could stand up to a Pixar flick.

Re:Pixar's stuff is better than most adult films!

[Theom]

Disney isn't creative, they:
a) Use public domain material and screw it up.
b) Use well known copyrighted material and screw it up.
c) Use they name to sell what others have made.

"MASSIVE"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the last ALL CAPS NAME was FORTRAN because computers finally supported lowercase characters after that.

Re:"MASSIVE"?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Yeah, but yelling always gets people's attention...

Easter eggs

[atrus]

(A few update Tolkein; 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.)

Damn, now I'm going to have to watch Two Towers like 5 times until I see that scene... great way to get me to spend more money :-/

Re:Easter eggs

[blackwizard]

Classy. I wonder if the computer animators got crafty and snuck in teapots? I think my eyes will hurt by the end of the movie if I try to find out...

Re:Easter eggs

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

[...] 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.

Is it the giant-phone guy from "Trigger-Happy TV"?

[ring] "HELLO?!!"

(Orc runs past with sword sticking out of its face...)

"I'M IN A BATTLE SCENE!"

(Massive cavalry charge past phone guy)

"A *BATTLE* SCENE! FOR SOME RUBBISH MOVIE!"

"WOT?!! NO, DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING TILL I GET BACK!"

"ALRIGHT THEN!! CIAO!"

>;K

Re:Easter eggs

[falzer]

Classy. I wonder if the computer animators got crafty and snuck in teapots? I think my eyes will hurt by the end of the movie if I try to find out...

That would be pretty damn cool, actually. Apparently a teapotahedron made an appearance in Toy Story.

Re:Easter eggs

[Anonymous Coward]

That guy will be easy to spot -- Just look for the SUV weaving back & forth.

MASSIVE Crowd?

[quantaman]

No, I do not have a receipt. I won it as a door prize at the Star Trek convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical, as the average Trekker has no use for a medium size belt.

The "twin towers"?

[Artifice_Eternity]

I really can't wait untill the twin towers. When Hollywood makes great movies like this the whole MPAA trying to take away our rights thing doesn't sound so bad...

Is this a troll?

Re:The "twin towers"?

[styxlord]

+1 Troll

Re:The "twin towers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf are you talking about?

Book 1) LOTR, Fellowship of the Ring
Book 2) LOTR, The Two Towers
Book 3) LOTR, The Return of the King

Troll yourself. wtf.

Re:The "twin towers"?

[buswolley]

N9o. It is not. It is just an opinion that has a different view than what most vocal slashdotters tell. This is called freedom of speech. You, for even asking, are the true troll.

And Yes, I think the whole MPAA is evil.

Re:The "twin towers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I beleive the confusion is over the name of the second book which is "The Two Towers", not to be confused with the Twin Towers formerly of the WTC.
It's a common mistake but fortunately Hollywood have realised the distinction and quite rightly allowed ignored the tens\thousands\millions of people claiming the title of the film should be changed in light of the events of 11th September 2001.

Re:The "twin towers"?

[Myco]

Come on now. We all know a better title would be "Lord of the Rings Episode II: Attack of the Orcs."

Yeah.

Re:The "twin towers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you count

• The Hobbit
• • it would be episode 3. ;>

Re:The "twin towers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now in IMAX format, plot not included.

CGI and Harry Potter

[itwerx]

Slightly OT but I wonder if they could CGI the Dumbledore character into future Harry Potter movies?

(The cool old British guy that played him died a couple weeks ago.)
.
.
.
Moderators - you should mod the first half of this comment Insightful and mod the last half Off Topic.
But then of course they cancel each other out! I.e. don't waste your mod points...
Unless of course this middle bit tips the balance towards funny...? :)
.
.
.
Hey, karma whores, I'm too lazy right now to provide links to the relevant articles re old guy, death and Dumbledore. Here's your chance to provide links to relevant articles and score! :)

Re:CGI and Harry Potter

[Anonymous Coward]

Relevant to Harry potter, which is off the topic of the article.

heres your link Richard Harris dies at age 72

OCR!

[itwerx]

A little OCR would save their server a fair thrashing and make the article more readable.
Anybody wanna do that and mirror it?

(DMCA , schmee-MCA :)

Re:OCR!

[blowhole]

OCR on 4 pages of text is like driving to your neighbor's house ...and then killing him with a rocket launcher.

Re:OCR!

[Theom]

GTA forever!

Re:OCR!

[cp99]

Or sending the rocket through their house, and into the sheep behind it.

Re:OCR!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's good family fun?

Hollywood?

[Anonymous Coward]

Id just like to say it was directed by a NZ'er and filmed entirely in New Zealand :)

A digital analog

[PsychoKiller]

From page 42: 'This is a digital analog to a technique...'

I know that this sentence makes sense, but it sounds so funny that it seems wrong.

Re:A digital analog

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup.
Should be "analogue", but you damn colonials can't get anything right..!

Re:A digital analog

[tekunokurato]

It's used frequently in the simulation business (video, music, etc.). It's essentially a simulation of analog properties.

For example, my TB-303 has digital analog distortion knobs one can turn to apply an analog-esque effect, even though it's technically digital spacing.

Re:A digital analog

[styrotech]

I think they meant analog (or analogue) as in something that bears an analogy to something else, rather than the non-digital definition.

Oy.

[DrEldarion]

(Obligatory post complaining about how people at slashdot are hypocrites, one day bashing the MPAA, the next day raving about an upcoming movie)

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Oy.

[DrEldarion]

(Obligatory reply saying parent is generalizing and how not everybody on Slashdot has the same viewpoints)

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Oy.

[Kierthos]

Obligatory response about how people can have one view of the films and film-makers and an entirely different view about the PAC that is determined to make as much money as possible off of the movies, while simultaneously screwing the viewing public and film-makers.

Kierthos

Re:Oy.

[D iz a n k Meister]

Obligatory response about how "God forbid that film-makers, err umm, PAC's try to feed their families".

Above message mirrored here

[perthstyle]

Mirror mirror mirror

PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[LadyJessica]

Hi there. I'm a complete Tolkien fanatic. Can you name the seven sons of Fëanor? His mother? His father? His significance, even? I really wanted to like PJ's version of LOTR, but it was too fast. I can't really remember any one scene vividly from his movee. He tried to cram in all the action by sacrificing all the atmosphere. Hobbiton did look pretty, though. I don't think I'll bother with his version of The Two Towers. I'll just read it again instead.

The only thing worse than PJ's LOTR is any recent Star Wars movie. :-)

Oh, but the special effects were good, so I guess it's OK. Too bad about Tom B., though. BTW, I have nothing but respect for Christopher L.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Oculus Habent]

It did leave a good bit out, but you can't expect anyone but true fanatics to sit through 6 hours per movie to ensure every bit was included. The additions/adaptations for Arwen's character are understandable. I don't really miss Tom Bombadil, though. He was a fun character, but he didn't have anything to do with the story. Ultimately, he was a sidetrack, a lead-in to a book that was never written.

I know I'll catch a lot of flak for this, but here goes:

I really enjoyed the books, and would not even begin to compare a movie to them for the wholeness and the granularity of the story. Even so, the book offers unfair advantages. Tolkien can say "his eyes flashed" and you make it happen, which is why turning a popular work into a movie is so difficult. Peter James does a great job with the material. I particularly can't wait to see the Ents, as I would like to see a tree that wasn't a tree.

Moving into the dangerous ground, Tolkien wrote some great work, but his books require great imagination to fill in the holes. Tolkien's time scale was never very concise(on the mountain, turn around, in the mine...) and the spaces in his book sometimes leave you wanting for some accounting (Frodo suddently ages twenty-seven years without any significant events?)

Don't get me wrong; I love the books, and the story. So don't shoot me.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

Too fast you say? I think Jackson did a great job getting so much atmosphere and detail down in the first episode as he did. To satisfy hard-core fanatics like yourself (btw I don't care that much about Fëanor or his family, and I don't think it would have added much) there must be made, not three movies, but thirty-something. Right?

Keep in mind that Jackson had a really rough time convincing the movie companies to even extend it to three parts (filmed simultaneously and not waiting to see the public approval of the first), and when New Line finally accepted they almost shit themselves in the process.

It's a lot of storyline to cover, things need to be sped up. I almost feel sorry for you, being so into it that you can't appreciate a good effort. It must be boring.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[jdbo]

While I agree that the experience of the movie doesn't match up to reading the books (or listening the audio adaptations - yes, I own all of them... so I'm pretty out there, even if I can't speak Quenya), neither do I think they should be approached in the same way.

I feel that Tolkien's primary writing interests (i.e. the kinds of passages that he enjoyed writing the most, vs. the ideas that he was most interested in conveying) were pastoral and historical, vs. spectacle.

Referring to his "on fairy stories" essay (sorry, don't have it in front of me), he describes one of his favorite effects as evoking the sense of something without filling in all the details (which would reduce it to the mundane). In fact, if there is anything that I find stingy abut Tolkien's writing, it is his brevity of description in the (for lack of a better term) action/otherwise-awe-inspiring sequences (on the plus side, this leaves one hungry for more).

Movies, OTOH, are a much more visceral and literal medium - and lend themselves directly to spectacle in a way that books never do - so I see it as a natural change for the films to focus on the visually awe-inspiring end of things, vs. encompassing the (almost never-ending) detail of the novels, much of which doesn't lend itself to a visual presentation.

So, while I'd certainly sit through a 45-hour, page-faithful version of LOTR, I'd also have to admit that it would almost inevitably make lousy viewing! :)

Anyway, I enjoyed the fast pacing of FOTR; I thought it helped lend a urgency to the film that would have evaporated were they spending too much - or any! - time sitting around discussing Beren and Luthien.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Compuser]

I am not a Tolkien fanatic and not "wise in the lore" but didn't Tolkien write "The adventures of Tom Bombadil"?

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Dai_Quat]

Who the fuck was Feanor anyway? (I know. I'm just making a point) I'm reading the Silmarillion now and I can't even recall one of his sons!

But c'mon. Where else are you going to hear Sindarin, Quenya, Dwarvish SUNG in a choir? The Lament for Gandalf, sung in Elvish? DANG!

Where else are you going to see Barad-dur or Orthanc, or Minas Tirith? Or Shadowfax, or the Argonath? Or Fangorn, or Minas Morgul, the Dead Marshes, Oliphants, Fell Beasts, Balrogs, Nazgul!

PANT PANT PANT...

Disappointing?!!? You been smoking the pipeweed?

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[AndroidCat]

Even so, the book offers unfair advantages. Tolkien can say "his eyes flashed" and you make it happen, which is why turning a popular work into a movie is so difficult.

Hmm, this reading thing sounds like some kind of client/server wetware interface. Does that make LoTR cyberpunk? :^)

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[plutonick]

Peter James does a great job with the material

He does? I have never heard of him.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you've no clue who Fingolfin was, either. Or that the ram which struck down the gates of Gondor was named after Morgoth's own hammer.

Middle Earth would not be Middle Earth without the Silmarillion. But I'll bite on yer, "Been smoking the pipeweed?" line.

I consider Jackson's films no better than Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates, or any other war/history influenced/etc. film. They all tend to be great, but if you want the truth to what actually happened, you need to look elsewhere.

(And yes, I'm aware of the idiocy of 'the truth to what actually happened' in reference to a work of fiction. :P)

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[10Ghz]

What's wrong with PJ's LOTR? I think these are the main thing people complain about:

1. It's too fast! They left out too much stuff!

You need to keep one thing in mind: this movie is not a "book moved to the silver-screen". It's a movie adaptation of a book. Movies and books are completely different kinds of media. Movies are a visual media that can be only few hours long. Books rely on the imagination of the reader, and they can be of any length. You can spend, days, weeks, months reading a book. And because of that, the book can be full of characters and details. That's just not possible in a movie. Movie of a book WILL be different, that is a fact. They will be different for the simple reason that books and movies are completely different medias.

2. Where's Tom Bombadil?

Tom Bombadil had nothing to do with the story. He would have just made the movie longer (20 minutes?), and the movie was already as long as it could be. What would they then remove from the story in order to fit in a Bombadil-sidetrack? And I don't know about you, but Tom Bombadil would have looked stupid in the movie

3. What's the deal with Arwen/Glorfindel?

Glorfindel had no major role in the book. You could remove him, and it would not change the story one bit. Arwens character needed to be widened, so that viewers would have at least one female character. And besides, had they handled Arwen like they did in the books, they would have mentioned Arwen in one half-sentence, and then, in the third part, Aragorn suddenly marries her! Viewers would have been too confused.

4. But the movie ends differently than the book does!

Yes it does. For the simple reason that the books ending would not work in a movie. Movie needs a climax in the end. In the book, there was no real climax. It was spread between the end of first book and the beginning of the second. That would not work in a movie.

5. But they changes Saruman as well!

Read my first point. Saruman was a complex character. They needed to simplify him for the movie. a few hours long movie simply doesn't have the luxury a book does when it comes to complex characters.

Seriously: you seem like one of those fanatics who think that "any change to the book = bad!". They needed to make changes to the book in order to make a movie out of it. Had they not made any changes, each episode would be about 20 hours long, cost about one billion each and be a commercial flop.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[gl4ss]

****In fact, if there is anything that I find stingy abut Tolkien's writing, it is his brevity of description in the (for lack of a better term) action/otherwise-awe-inspiring sequences (on the plus side, this leaves one hungry for more).****

this, is actually(most of the times) the most distinct seperation between 'pulp' and 'heavy duty literature' (i lack better english words, sry).

the more detailed the telling is to little irrelevant details the less the writer has to tell about the actualy story and less the reader has to imagine, making reading faster. you can probably read all the harry potters faster than lotr(silmarillion not even counted..), even though the latest harry potter is very thick as to what comes to thickness, which is what most people use as meter to how hard the book is for the reader(whic, of course has nothing to do with reality but that's how people meter things).

sometimes you can't imagine a 30page short story to be fitted in 3 hour movie, while sometimes you could except 300page novel fit in the same space easily.. i've stopped hoping for straight-direct-very-honest movie versions of some good books because they would be most of the time just plain impossible, it's much easier to imagine the process to go the other way around since books can be more forgiving, you can explain that 2.5hour movien in few pages easily and focus on the parts that you want.

i like both pulp and 'non-pulp' literature, depending heavily on the book, you can do both very crappy too. .. i'm in no ways a literature expert or not even a student of it. i did like fotr(movie) though, in my opinion it's just about as good movie adaption as you can do of it.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

[i]The Adventures of Tom Bombadill[/i] was written as a childrens book, based on a doll that he had given to his son Christopher. Also Tom was one of Tolkiens first inhabitants of Middle-Earth.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[thatguywhoiam]

I particularly can't wait to see the Ents, as I would like to see a tree that wasn't a tree.

This is exactly what I'm fearing about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy adaptation.

How do you film something that's described like, "The Vogon ship hung low in the sky in exactly the way that bricks don't."

...?

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[clarkc3]

Tom Bombadil had nothing to do with the story.

So why exactly did they decide to put Bill the pony in the movie for all of 5 seconds? He had nothing to do with the story, and never even did the scene where they got Bill the pony, but they say goodbye to him before going into the mines in the movie. That always puzzled me

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Yunzil]

Don't take offense at what follows. I'm a LotR fan too; I'm just tired of whiny Tolkien geeks.

Can you name the seven sons of Fëanor? His mother? His father?

No, no, and no.

His significance, even?

Didn't he make the Silmarils or something?

I really wanted to like PJ's version of LOTR, but it was too fast.

That's because it was, wait for it, a MOVIE. You can't put everything from the book in the movie, unless you want a 36 hour film. Now, I know that you'd love that, but the rest of us wouldn't. They can't make enough money from people like you to justify a 36 hour movie. Sorry.

Too bad about Tom B.

Why? Tom Bombadil and the even more ridiculous Goldberry might be the biggest flaws in all the books. Every time I reread the series, I skim over the whole Bombadil fiasco until they get to Bree. When I heard they were leaving T.B. out of the movie, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It's too fast! They left out too much stuff!

True, *Real_Tolkien_Fanatics* require 6 movies, at least 3 hours long. The extended DVD should help, but not enough. I am continually amazed at Peter Jackson's triage ability to determine the important points and find a way to cram them in the film.

2. Where's Tom Bombadil?

Tom Bombadil is an important part of Middle Earth, if not the story. Peter Jackson is right in always being willing to meddle with the story and not with Middle Earth. I think the reason Bombadil (and more specifically the Old Forest) could be left out is that the "Gandalf rides to Gondor" and the introduction already introduce us to first&second age Middle Earth.

3. Whats the deal with Arwen/Glorfindel?

The bigger change is putting the elf (either one) on the horse with Frodo. Also, the horse can easily outrun the Nazgul (this irritated all kinds of equestrian types, once the Nazgul where encased in armour there is no chance of them catching an elf mount). See more Arwen gripes below.

4. But the movie ends differently than the book does

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is unforgivable. Hopefully Peter Jackson will produce a DVD that gets it right. Tolkien was a vetran and knows Frodo will be shell shocked for life. Its very important that Frodo *does*not*live*happily*ever*after*. A better ending would be for Frodo to intentionally tackle Gollumn and throw both of them into the flames (note that I haven't been keeping up with the leaks). Note that to keep the "Gollumn falls alone in the lava" ending, Gandalf must spare Saruman's life (this is about as fundamental as things get in LOTR). Ignoring the other consequences of this is pretty foolish.

Since Jackson has already programed the scourging of the shire, I hope that this can be fixed.

5. But the change Saruman as well.

This is pretty stupid. There really is no reason to make Saruman admit to himself his enslavement to Mordor. It would only take a few seconds ("I've got a wonderful idea"), to show this.

The worse change is Aragon. The film variety is a complete wimp next to the book. Don't ask me how the "Aragon views the Peletar" will be done (probably cut due to the lack of Aunidille (not bothered to check the spelling).

Finally:
I am one of those who believe that all changes to the story=bad. I will admit that some make sense (Arwen's "all my grace to you, Frodo" scene justifies her on the horse (but not the slow horse). The direct flip/flop on wether Gandalf lights firecrackers for hobbit children shows Jackson ability to understand the book and show it on film. The end of the book is fundamental and Tolkien insisted that it was required from the events at the start of the book.

The total cost would hardly be much more than the present cost (I imagine that model creation for charecters and locations is the main cost for this film). Also judging by the money made and Hollywood greed for sequals, the 20 hour version may yet be made (the legal issues of CGI modification to make different actors look like the same charecters would be interesting).

An annoyed ent.

Ents are also annoyed that the they saved the day in the _Two_Towers_ but got less than a second in the trailer.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[10Ghz]

Why shouldn't they put Bil the Pony there? Bil doesn't distract from the main story (Bombadil would), Bil doesn't increase the length of the movie (something Bombadil would). Honestly, there are no drawbacks in having Bil there, there would be plenty of drawbacks of having Tom there.

If something doesn't add to the story doesn't automatically mean that it shouldn't be there. But if that "something" doesn't add a thing to the story, but it also requires alot of screen-time, would look stupid, would confuse the viewers... Then it has to go. Bil the Pony doesn't take screen-time, doesn't look stupid nor does it confuse the viewers, so it can stay.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

"4. But the movie ends differently than the book does

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is unforgivable. Hopefully Peter Jackson will produce a DVD that gets it right. Tolkien was a vetran and knows Frodo will be shell shocked for life. Its very important that Frodo *does*not*live*happily*ever*after*. A better ending would be for Frodo to intentionally tackle Gollumn and throw both of them into the flames (note that I haven't been keeping up with the leaks). Note that to keep the "Gollumn falls alone in the lava" ending, Gandalf must spare Saruman's life (this is about as fundamental as things get in LOTR). Ignoring the other consequences of this is pretty foolish." ..he was referring to the ending of the first movie. It ends a little into the second book. Thanks, though, for spoiling it for hundreds of thousands of /. readers.

OK, OK, thanks for spoiling it for the 3-4 /. readers who haven't read the books yet.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one main reason why they give Bill his name... so that you can relate to Sam.
To Sam, Bill was not just a nameless beast of burden, but a friend. You get more of an insight into Sam than you would otherwise.
It makes his loyalty to Frodo that much more believable. And at about 3 seconds of screen time, relatively cheap to pass on, compared to the many minutes of pointless Tom B.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[jdbo]

Gotta disagree with you on a bunch of these points...
> Putting the elf on the horse with Frodo:
a) Equestrian types complaining about horses under the influence of thousand-year-old mystic spirits... should learn to suspend their disbelief; why wouldn't these horses be enchanted in special, performance-enhancing ways? Or is Mordor above the use of magic steroids? ;)

b) putting someone else on the horse with Frodo
Actually, this works to enhance the tension regarding whether or not Frodo will take the ring at the Council. If he had already shown that degree of courage (at the river), then the moment of taking ont he burden of the ring would be less dramatic. It's all about visually-depicting drama, which is very different from verbally-depicted drama.

> the movie ends differently than the book does. NOOOOOOOO!!
I believe the prior comment referred to the FOTR movie, which took its ending from the beginning of TTT. We dont know exactly how ROTK (or TTT!) will end yet - because it's not out yet! sure, PJ said that the Scouring won't happen, but that doesn't eliminate Frodo going to the Havens (which to my mind is more important to the themes you mention than the Scouring).

> But the change Saruman as well. This is pretty stupid.
Actually, this simplifies the newbie audience's understanding of the villains in a very useful way; Saruman = a big henchman + Sauron is the biggest villain. Having them in opposition to one another would very confusing, esp. as Sauron's influence is only shown indirectly (through his minions) in the Third Age - he's never actually in the same scene! Whether this works can be disagreed with, but it's certainly not an unmotivated, useless change.

> The worse change is Aragon. The film variety is a complete wimp next to the book.
In the book we are able to learn a _lot_ of backstory on Aragorn via stories, _many_ dialogue asides, and also the appendices. For the movie, they moved this character arc (of taking on the role of king, which in the book was more or less determined at the Council of Elrond, with everything else filled in later via dialogue) into the story that they could show (movies that show = good movies; movies that tell = dull movies.). So... look for Aragorn to "grow" into his destined role as king.

> Ents are also annoyed that the they saved the day in the _Two_Towers_ but got less than a second in the trailer.
Hope you're being facetious with this one - the ents are going to be the big visual surprise for those who know about them, and a complete surprise for those who don't! That's why it's a trailer, vs. a "sampler".

arggh, should be getting work done...

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

(Frodo suddently ages twenty-seven years without any significant events?)

Yet more fodder for the theory that Frodo = Christ.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[pforhan]

I don't really miss Tom Bombadil, though. He was a fun character, but he didn't have anything to do with the story.

Actually, a part of the Bombadil sequence does have something to do with the story: From the mounds of the Barrow Wights, Bombadil provides weapons to Merry or Pippen, who ultimately uses that weapon to pierce the RingWraith King's armor. The sequence also explains why this is, ie, that the swords were made especially for the purpose of fighting Sauron and the Nazgul. (Forgive the inaccuracies above... it's been a little while since I've read the books!) Here is a (detailed) link about the encounter with the Barrow Wights: http://valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/papers/B arrowWights.htm Relevant quote:

The blades were made long ago by the men of Westernesse, foes of the Dark Lord. They were overcome by the evil men of Carn Dum of the land of Angmar. ... The Dark Lord here referred to was Sauron. The head Nazgul was the Witch-king of Angmar.

Pat.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[JosefK]

It was a small collection of poems, some of which had appeared previously in other publications, and few of which had any sort of link to Tom Bombadil or even Middle-earth.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[Hektor_Troy]

How do you film something that's described like, "The Vogon ship hung low in the sky in exactly the way that bricks don't."

Easy, you just film it in exactly the same way Neaderthals don't.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[malaqua_x]

I think that the only problem with losing Tom Bombadil was that it made the first part of the journey look too short. I wasn't looking for 10 minutes of extra footage but a few short cut shots of different areas could have made the trip seem more difficult and lengthy like it seemed in the book.

Re:PJ's Version Is Disappointing

[clarkc3]

personally, I dont see how that 3 second clip added anything, to me it just seemed totally random that all of the sudden with. Yes, Bill was a friend in the book, and was used to show lots of insight to Sam's character, but in the movie I actually consider it a waste of 3 seconds that only confuses people who have never read the book and see it at completely random

Now you've done it.

[Soko]

(A few update Tolkein; 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.)

Oh the irony...

Just remember after you post this you are now fair game. What??!? you ask?

If I'm in the theater to watch TTT for the first time, and you're in the very same theater but to see your fourth iteration, and you might be getting a little teensy bit bored, if you perchance forget where you are and you take a call on _your_ fucking cell phone, I get to kill you with my +5 Vorpal (Offical) LoTR Special DVDs.

Fair warning, OK?

Soko

Re:Now you've done it.

[fiftyfly]

If I'm in the theater to watch TTT for the first time, and you're in the very same theater but to see your fourth iteration, and you might be getting a little teensy bit bored, if you perchance forget where you are and you take a call on _your_ fucking cell phone, I get to kill you with my +5 Vorpal (Offical) LoTR Special DVDs.

personally if some asshat beside me feels the need to take a call while I'm watching TTT my weapon of choice would prob include a +20 Mace Of Bashing!!!

That is all.

Re:Now you've done it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe. Nice to see someone else got the same idea about those birds.. Wouldn't make such a good story though ;)

Fuzzy logic

[mesozoic]

The article mentions that in order to support such a complicated undertaking -- each character has anywhere from 100 to 8000 behavioral logic nodes to govern its behavior -- the creators of Massive used fuzzy logic to make their creations act.

As far as I understand, fuzzy logic -- using probabilities instead of binary values -- has been given the shaft in most of the computing world. People can't wrap their heads around a concept that's termed 'fuzzy', no matter how solid the mathematics behind it are. Maybe this sort of accomplishment will open new doors for research involving fuzzy logic in computing systems.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[jdbo]

I agree - this is a real accomplishment in terms of pioneering a new development methodologies, esp. considering how geared the typical CS mindset is completely focused on absolutely predictable results.

I enjoy reading up on (some branches) of AI, and the most interesting advances (IMHO) in the last few years have been coming from the specific application end, i.e. video games and this... on the pure research end I'm still most interested in the work done by Douglas Hofstdater at U Indiana, but the work being done for games and movies really digs into on the important, but unsexy issues like "how the hell do we actually work with this stuff to get stuff done??". Sure, they've got a conceptually simple goal (make crowds fight!), but this is a case where the devil is in the details, but there are a billion details and the details are all that matters.

Anyway, it's great to see that they've made strides in making this sort of non-deterministic (kinda-misapplied-term) functionality usable by normal humans.

Besides, I'm freaking out at the idea of seeing 10,000 orcs (and the article mentions that there will be 100,000 fighters in one of the ROTK battles - yeep!)

Re:Fuzzy logic

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people can wrap their heads around probabilities pretty well. What they didn't understand was why an old proven concept needed a new catchy name to get going.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[D iz a n k Meister]

Fuzzy logic doesn't use probabilities--just weights. Probabilities add up to 1. Fuzzy values can add up to more than 1. For instance, If I say a cup of tea is hot, and on a scale of 0 to 1 weight the "hotness" of the tea, I may rank it at .7 . Under a fuzzy system, that doesn't mean I rank the "coldness" of the tea at .3 . It could be more or less or equal to .3.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[Lars Arvestad]

When I have had fuzzy logic explained to me, it has not been about probabilities. Sure, the output is a number between 0 and 1 which you can interpret as a probability, but the logic part of it is rather more of a poor re-invention of probability theory. And if fuzzy logic has "been given the shaft", then that is why.

Actual probability theory is highly regarded in CS. There are people spending their careers on probabilistic algorithms, where randomness is used as a powerful tool. In combinatorics, probabilities is used to for example show existence of structures ("probabilistic method"). Markov chains and processes are commonly used for modelling real world phenomena, and I would be surprised if they were not used in computer games and simulations for movies.

In short: CS and probability theory goes hand in hand.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you ditch your proprietary scale and give me it's temperature in a known standard? :D

Re:Fuzzy logic

[nathanh]

Fuzzy logic is not the same thing as probabilities. You and the original poster are both confused.

Fuzzy logic assigns a proportion of truth (between 0 and 1) to each fuzzy logic value. A proportion of truth is not the same thing as a probability. A probability assigns a value to the chance of a particular outcome for an as-yet-unknown event. Fuzzy logic assigns a value - the proportion of truth - to already known data. The difference is not even subtle or semantic: it's a huge difference.

I'll try to explain this better. In boolean logic a statement is either false (0) or true (1). In fuzzy logic the truth of a statement is any value between 0 and 1 inclusive. So for example you might have a value OLD with a baby being 0 and a pensioner being 1 and a linear slope between those two extremes. You don't have to choose a linear slope, of course.

Once you have the truth of a statement as a number you can use logic tables. So NOT(x) equals 1-x, OR(x,y) = maximum(x, y), and AND(x,y) = minimum(x,y). So the statement

cool car = (sports OR red) AND NOT (suv)

Is equivalent to

cool car = minimum(maximum(sports, red), 1 - suv)

You then convert raw data for a given car into truth values and pass it through the fuzzy logic statement to determine the truth value of a complicated concept like "cool car". A pink station wagon would have (sports,red,suv) values of (0.0, 0.5, 0.0). A green Ford Explorer with an Type-R sticker would have values of (0.2, 0.0, 0.9).

So to take this example further, a Ford Explorer would rate highly on the suv value, so 1 - suv would be low and the minimum(..., 1-suv) statement would drive cool car towards zero. Imagine that cool car was 0.1 after doing the calculations. What that value means is that the truth value of the statement "The Ford Explorer Is a Cool Car" is 0.1... which is not very true.

Notice how this isn't a probability! If that value of 0.1 was a probability then it would mean that every 10th Ford Explorer is cool while the other 9 Ford Explorers are not cool. Clearly that's nonsense. Ford Explorers are all equally uncool. I hope this example makes it clear that Fuzzy Logic is not the same thing as probabilities.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pediddle]

Well fine, but if I tell you something is 33 degrees Celcius, and I ask you, "Is it hot?", how do you answer? Yes, no, kind of, a little, pretty hot? If you're a computer, that would basically be from 0 to 1. Yes, some human would have to set a range of temperatures to map to that 0-1 scale (5 degrees is 0, 70 degrees is .9, etc.). But humans would never see the 0-1 value, only the "cold, warm, kind of, pretty hot, hot" value.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pVoid]

Nobody seems to have stated this, so I will have to:

the probability p(X) where X is an event, is simply the number of possible scenarios where X happens, divided by the possible number of scenarios in the universe of X.

To give an example: the probability that I will pick a spade card out of a random deck is: 13 / (13 * 4) = 1/4.

It has no guess work done at all in it: it is combinatorics... the word essentially means to count.

Fuzzy logic is attributing a value to an expression, it is a predicate. And there is no set rule for a predicate. For example, the email spam monitoring system described in an earlier post does exactly this: it attributes a value, a predicate to an email being spam or not. (unfortunately, the author uses the word probability, but in effect his algorithm is a statistical predicate - not a mathematical probabilty -- to establish a real probability, he would have to know the universe of possible emails, and also the universe of emails which are spam, which is pointless because at that point he would know what is spam and what is not -- i digress)

A chess program is also doing computing fuzzy predicates determining how 'good' a certain move is. It's like a rating. There is no way a chess program can work out the entire tree of moves, so in effect, there is no way it can determine a probability in the 'true' sense.

To sum it up, fuzzy logic is basically a continuous boolean value. Are you happy? true.0, false.0, tru.false, tr.fffffalse. Hah... late. must sleep....

gnight...

Re:Fuzzy logic

[nathanh]

Nobody seems to have stated this, so I will have to: ... To sum it up, fuzzy logic is basically a continuous boolean value.

Actually you said exactly what I said.

Are you happy?

Just confused. Did you think you were explaining something to me?

Re:Fuzzy logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice how this isn't a probability! If that value of 0.1 was a probability then it would mean that every 10th Ford Explorer is cool while the other 9 Ford Explorers are not cool.

That 0.1 could easily be a probability - the probability that the person thinks all Ford Explorers are cool. So in a large population of people who all rate cars the same way, you'll find 1 person in 10 who thinks Ford Explorers are cool.

If you want to convince me fuzzy logic isn't probabilities, you'll need a better example than that!

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pVoid]

Nobody seems to have stated this, so I will have to: the probability p(X) where X is an event, is simply the number of possible scenarios where X happens, divided by the possible number of scenarios in the universe of X.

Quote properly. I'm not disagreeing with you, but nobody (including you) said in a clear and consice way what probabilities are. As soon as you state what it is, it becomes obvious that probabilites and fuzzy logic are completely distinct things.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[D iz a n k Meister]

Actually dude, that article was about a Bayesian filter. That means it uses a probabilistic reasoning system called a Bayesian Network, or uses the "naive" Bayes rule to reason about the data.

In fact it uses *real* mathematical probability about things that are knowable(if you knew what things they were, you wouldn't need him to write the filter) and some magic called

Conditional Independance

to create the Bayesian Network. Now thanks to our assumptions, conditional independance, about the things we know probabilities of, the resulting Bayesian Network is in fact a representation of the universe of possible emails. Conditional Independance is a short cut for certain problems when the "full joint distribution" is too big to deal with. (Yeah i said joint, but no it wasn't regarding the dizank)

Fuzzy logic, like you said, and the parent said, and as I said in response to the grand parent, doesn't use probabilities. But your Bayesian example does indeed use *real* *mathematical* probabilities.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pVoid]

Touche, but there is still a catch. He is applying the model of a bayesian filter to a real world scenario.

To quote him:

Here's a sketch of how I do statistical filtering. I start with one corpus of spam and one of nonspam mail. At the moment each one has about 4000 messages in it.

That statement has nothing theoretical about it... he's doing plain and simple statistical analysis on a limited universe. Mathematically speaking, it's easy to say "Conditional Independance", or "a test group of homogenous distribution", but in reality, it's not.

The fundamental catch here is that you don't know the universe of possibilities, and hence you have to establish an approximation that eliminates as much false positives as possible.

There lies the entire difference: if you actually knew the universe of possibilities (or had a homogeneous group selection), then and only then would the sum of all of your probabilties be equal to 1... and in the scope of that article: you would have 0 false positives, and 0 true negatives... But again: you would have established a rule that gives you hard-fact of what is and is not spam. Bam. back in the same hole.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[nathanh]

That 0.1 could easily be a probability - the probability that the person thinks all Ford Explorers are cool. So in a large population of people who all rate cars the same way, you'll find 1 person in 10 who thinks Ford Explorers are cool.

No, the "proportion of truth" isn't a subjective thing. You don't get to pick another person and get a different answer because the person's opinion plays no part in it. We've already explicitly defined the fuzzy logic statement:

cool car = (sports OR red) AND NOT(suv)

And if my example was more complete I would have explicitly defined the mapping between the car and the tuple (sports, red, suv). I didn't explicitly list the mapping but that's just my laziness. Create whatever mapping you like and we'll go with that.

There's no room for subjective interpretation. That's why it's called fuzzy logic. Two people can start with the same statement and the same tuples and get the same answer. That's the whole point. The fuzzy logic statement isn't asking whether you think the Ford Explorer is cool, or whether somebody thinks the Ford Explorer is cool, but rather it's saying "this is how we are defining coolness for this particular problem".

Now to be perfectly clear, the statement and the method of getting the tuples is the subjective part. You might think "red" has nothing to do with cool. You might think "suv" is very cool. You might disagree that a Type-R sticker turns a car into a sports car. That's OK. Fuzzy Logic isn't about defining an Absolute Truth. It's about defining a convenient definition of truth for a particular problem. You get to choose what suits your particular problem.

So an air-conditioner might say that 18C and 35C with a linear scale are a good definition for "hot". A refrigerator might choose -4C to 2C with an exponential scale. A quantum physicist might pick 0K to 10^27K with a logarithmic scale. But once you choose the mapping and you have the statement there's no room for argument. Fuzzy Logic is not about probabilities!

Re:Fuzzy logic

[nathanh]

Ahh, I see, thank you.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[D iz a n k Meister]

Alright, you got me. Conditional Independance doesn not exist in reality; I called it magic didn't I? This is a LOTR discussion =)

Anyway, the really interesting part IMHO is what the real difference is, if any, between a rule that gives you hard-fact of what is and is not (spam, whatever) and an approximation that does it about as well.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[mesozoic]

Thanks to nathanh for explaining something I couldn't even remember properly :)

Re:Fuzzy logic

[hammy]

No, there are multiple interpretations of what probability means. The particular interpretation of probability you're talking about is in fact rather problematic. There are some classes of event that cannot be derived in the manner in which you describe....

Re:Fuzzy logic

[iabervon]

The problem with fuzzy logic is that if it would be useful, something else would be more useful. Sure, you can have a fuzzy truth value for whether something is hot or not, but you'd do better with a temperature measurement instead of a value between 0 and 1. There's very little that's useful when converted into a bounded linear range.

Of course, fuzzy logic is only supposed to replace boolean values. But computer science has not failed to notice the limitations of boolean values; booleans are only used to control things where partial values wouldn't be useful.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pVoid]

Ahhhh... you restore my faith in rational conversations on /.

Anyways, yes, I find it fascinating too to be able to have approximations like that.

I find it just as curious as the exponential function which for natural numbers f(n) = !n...

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pVoid]

Yes. For example what is the probability of picking a random number among reals and having that number be a rational number. The proof makes use of topology and limits...

You may be using more stronger more complex mathetmatical tools, but the idea that you know what your universes are remains.

(btw, for the curious: the probabilty of picking a random number among reals and it being a rational is 0)

Re:Fuzzy logic

[nathanh]

The problem with fuzzy logic is that if it would be useful, something else would be more useful. Sure, you can have a fuzzy truth value for whether something is hot or not, but you'd do better with a temperature measurement instead of a value between 0 and 1.

No, you wouldn't. Imagine you have a value WEIGHT equal to 1kg. Is that "heavy"? If you're talking about the weight of planets then "not heavy at all". If you're talking about the weight carrying capacity of an ant then "very heavy". Fuzzy logic conveniently bundles the values and the bounds into a single number.

There's very little that's useful when converted into a bounded linear range.

The second problem with what you're saying is that most measurement systems are linear (ie, temperature, weight, length) or exponential (ie, volume). Fuzzy logic lets you choose the most convenient "mapping" between actual measurements and fuzzy logic values. Apparently triangular mappings are very common, though I wouldn't know why.

I think many people find it far too easy to dismiss fuzzy logic. It's not a stupid concept. It is not so obvious for the simple examples, but once you start combining multiple bounded-values you'll appreciate the conciseness and logical provability of fuzzy logic. It's very easy to go from your mathematically proven fuzzy logic statement to some C code, but it's much harder to extract the logical reasoning from existing C code.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[pjp6259]

The company I work for (NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research) uses Fuzzy Logic extensively. A common scenario is that we have data from a lot of different sensors, and we use fuzzy logic to combine them all together and make a decision (e.g. is it safe to fly?). Another example I've seen is using fuzzy logic to clean up noisy data. We use fuzzy logic to find boundaries, fit curves, etc.

Here are a bunch of examples of the use of fuzzy logic at NCAR.

Re:Fuzzy logic

[ahoehn]

Fuzzy Logic it's like Wolly Thinking, only softer, and with less sheep.

(Terry Pratchett thought it first)

Re:Fuzzy logic

[iabervon]

For almost all applications, you won't be writing code that cares whether something is, in context, "heavy" or not without caring what the scale is. There's nothing that will treat an object that's heavy for an ant to carry the same as an object that's heavy for a planet. Once you've fixed the set of things that might be done depending on the weight, you'll know what the scale is, and it won't help to use a "heaviness" value instead of the actual measurement.

But even if you wanted to have something work across different scales, what you want is to divide the measured weight by your reference weight and take the log. This would give -24 for a 1kg planet and 5 for a 1kg ant load (I think, just guessing reference weights). If you cared, you could then divide by the normal variation. This is still more useful than values between 0 and 1, still not bounded, and takes into account the standards for heaviness. (I also notice that "not heavy at all" and "very heavy" aren't numbers between 0 and 1, either)

Fuzzy logic generally involved mapping from one system into a 0-1 range, doing something oversimplified, and then mapping into another system. Each of the mappings is very sound mathematics (although you generally want to do it with functions of continuous variables and a pair of fourier transforms). The "logic" part, however, is not particularly justified; "and" and "or" aren't really that much like min and max. And without anything justified happening at the intermediate layer, you'd do better to go straight from input to output. Going straight from input to output is far more common than using fuzzy logic; it's signal processing.

Ethnomethodological Study

[Anonymous Coward]

For my ethnomethodological assignment I chose to violate established norms for behavior in a poker game. I was with three friends, and we were playing poker for pocket change. As is customary, after each hand the job of dealer passes to the left. I waited for my turn to deal, and when it came I began shuffling normally.

"Five card draw, deuces wild. Ante is twenty five cents," I said. I waited for everyone to put their quarters into the pot, and once everyone had paid the ante, I threw the entire deck of cards into the air, scattering them everywhere.

My friends were surprised, to say the least. One of them just looked at me as if I had lost my mind. One of them pulled a knife from his pocket jokingly and said, "We have a problem."

The third said "What the (expletive deleted) is wrong with you?" I laughed and explained the assignment as I picked up the cards. My friends seemed surprised that I would have been given such an assignment, but I tried to explain my fit of madness as best I could. My friends, not being of a sociological bent, were not terribly impressed or interested with my explanation, but they chuckled and said that if my intent was to disrupt the expected standards of behavior, I had succeeded. Once I had picked up the cards the game continued on as normal.

From the experiment I learned that people can have a wide range of reactions when confronted with unexpected or unacceptable behavior, especially when there is money involved (even a meager 25 cents). I was particularly amused at my friend's implication that violence might be a necessary reaction to such a breach of protocol, knowing that he was only half-joking with his knife-play. I imagine it would be quite risky to pull such a stunt had I not been such good friends with those involved.

Poster Idea

[the_one_smiley]

On the topic of CGI, does anyone know if there exists a poster-sized rendering of the scene with Gandalf facing the balrog in FotR? Am I the only one that thinks this would be the coolest poster ever?

- Smiley =)

Re:Poster Idea

[User 956]

Am I the only one that thinks this would be the coolest poster ever?

What are you, 12?

I've always hated D&D geeks. They give the actual smart geeks a bad rep. When they're not pestering you to play Magic, they're describing loudly, and in detail, the sexual exploits of their level 14 rogue-mage in the land of the cat people. A healthy imagination is one thing, but come on; If you want magic and fairy elves, watch the Smurfs.

Or better yet, shoot yourself in the fucking head and do us all a favor.

Re:Poster Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

Actually, my desktop on campus has a big ass painting of Gandalf fighting the Balrog atop Caradaras (sp? Sue me, it's 4:30 am and I never could spell that right!), I believe it was, for a background.

Note to 'I can't read but I'm a Tolkien fan!' people: Gandalf and the Balrog made it above ground and continued fighting.

The problem I have with it is it shows the Balrog with nice leathery wings. And of course, everyone knows, Balrogs don't have wings, rather, their flame and shadow extends to *look* like wings.

Ah hell, here comes the wings vs. no wings holy war..

Blow me while I shit

[Anonymous Coward]

you know you want to do it
Blow me while I shit
I might pay when you're through, bitch
blow me when I shit
then clean it with a lick
blow me blow me blow me while I shit

Re:MASSIVE Anus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here.

.....cell phone eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you hear me now?

The advertising is wrong re: the two towers anyway

[bobgap]

The Two Towers in the book are Orthanc and Cirith Ungol, not Orthanc and Barad dur.

OMFG Galileo spacecraft flying over Amalthea!

[Anonymous Coward]

right now!

Create your own crowds

[malducin]

For those interested, you can purchase Massive. Stephen Regelous, the brains behind this app, showed it last SIGGRAPH. You can check their website here:

Massive Software

Softimage also just announced their own system:

SOFTIMAGE ANNOUNCES SOFTIMAGE®|BEHAVIOR

Re:Create your own crowds

[Animats]

I think that's the old Motion Factory engine, which is a cute little system that wasn't very succesful as a game engine. Control is exercised with state machines with rule-based transitions. Some of the Stanford robotics people did it as a startup in the early 1990s. Motion Factory was used for Prince of Persia 3D, and never heard from again. Softimage (actually Avid, which now owns Softimage) bought up the company, and their CEO took over Softimage, a somewhat wierd result.

$15K, though. Avid uses the Macho Pricing Model: if it's expensive, it must be Professional. Avid really bought Softimage from Microsoft because Softimage was coming out with Digital Studio, a compositing package which threatened Avid's overpriced compositing systems. Avid never really seemed to want the 3D business. There was a big exodus from Softimage when Microsoft sold them off. Softimage XSI came out years late, and meanwhile, the industry mostly switched to Maya, which is $2K for the base package (and free for a version that stamps giant logos on everything).

Actually, the first really good crowd behavior engine used in a major motion picture drove the baby 'zillas in Godzilla. Unfortunately, the company that did that job went under shortly thereafter.

Re:Create your own crowds

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can easily create their own crowds by posting a 'MS consipracy revealed' to the tabloid side of /.

Re:Create your own crowds

[malducin]

I thought the baby Zilla's were done by Imageworks, unless some of the work was subcontracted. Digiscope also did stuff for the film as well a VisionArt, though both haven't done a lot of film work lately. Maybe someone else?

Re:Create your own crowds

[Animats]

I thought the baby Zillas were done by Imageworks.

No, Centropolis. 885 baby Godzillas driven by a flocking algorithm and some AI.

Re:Create your own crowds

[malducin]

Ahhh ok, thanks, I didn't have my Cinefex handy. What threw me off was your comment about the company being out of business, after all Centropolis merged with Das Werk. Heck they even worked on Eight Legged Freaks this year.

Re:The advertising is wrong re: the two towers any

[jdbo]

Actually, you're half right; Tolkien's British publisher insisted on breaking up his 6 "book", 1 volume work into 3 smaller volumes of 2 books each (due to a paper shortage), which compelled Tolkien to come up with new titles (as the original 6 "book" titles didn't apply broadly enough to the new groupings - TTT was originally "The Treason of Isengard" and "The Ring Goes South", IIRC).

In his letters Tolkien discusses his dissatisfaction with the title (though he came up with it), and vacillates as to exactly which two towers are referred to (!). Other towers he referrs to include Minas Morgul, and even Minas Tirith (although IMHO the last would only really be approp. for ROTK). I believe that Minas Morgul itself is described as having two towers on either side of its gates as well...

Anyway, I'm happy with it being ambiguous - but as far as the promos go, it makes sense to "nail this down" to shut down the ridiculous WTC connections.

And yes, you are correct, I don't have a girlfriend. ;)

CG Golum vs. CG Yoda

[Hektor_Troy]

Well, that's easy. Yoda has the Force and a light saber, Golum has a lisp!

Other than that, CG Golum is a computer generated image mapped on top of an actor, which makes his movements a lot more realistic. Or maybe they just got a really ugly person to play Golum ... you never can tell, can you?

Re:CG Golum vs. CG Yoda

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 2 "l"'s in Gollum

Change The Name!

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere there's a petition to change the name because 'Two Towers' sounds too much like the WTC.

Anybody got the link?

Re:Change The Name!

[Klerck]

Why yes! I have two links.

The petition
A protest site.

What a crazy world we live in.

If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[D iz a n k Meister]

CG Yoda would kick CG Golum's ass.

Re:If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[Dave_bsr]

Ahh, but what about CG yoda v. Gandalf. Now that would rock.

Re:If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[D iz a n k Meister]

Indeed that would be epic. But have you considered the Balrog vs the Rancor. That would be one hell of a CG battle.

Re:If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[Spytap]

I saw Yoda move, I got 50 bucks on the green guy.

Re:If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[rabiteman]

Indeed that would be epic. But have you considered the Balrog vs the Rancor. That would be one hell of a CG battle.

How long until battles like this are rendered live in video card tech demos at E3? *drool*

...And then how long until a former ATi employee leaks the alpha version to the web?

Re:If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[Myco]

Like anyone would take that bet. Blow me a freakin' smoke ring, Gandalf. Yoda 0wnZ j00.

Re:If CG Golum and CG Yoda got in a fight

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that would be much of a fight. Consider that the Balrog is on FIRE and holds a sword and a whip, AND is as big as the Rancor. Plus it might be able to fly. I think it would be more of a Rancor cookout.

Lord of Jurassic Park

[DAPence]

Yes, the software used in "The Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers" to produce the massive Orc armies at Helm's Deep is based on that used for the Jurassic Park movies. The cool thing about the Weta software, is that each 'Orc' has a small about of A.I. behind it, which will supposedly give the effects a more life-like appearance. DAPence Webmaster, THELORDOFTHERINGS.com

Re:Lord of Jurassic Park

[gl4ss]

orc ai:

while(all_your_ring_are_belong_to_us())
{
if(g runt()chief.grunt())
whine();
else if(!eat(hobbit)) order(hunt, hobbit);

if (type==sauron) yell("grhhheee eye ssseeeees");
else if(type==saruman) order(pizza, teenagemutanheroturtles);

}

what i'm saying is they should do tmht(or tmnt if you prefer) with this technological masterpiece. they might get decent acting in it too then.

Re:Lord of Jurassic Park

[Sabalon]

I love the mention in the article of how the AI was a bit too good and during one scene, while most were fighting, there were a bit of the orcs that decided it'd be better to run away.

There's AI for you - computer orcs becoming aware of survival!

Any of the Four Towers are correct.

[Dai_Quat]

Here's the history behind the Four Towers. Any two will do: http://members.cts.com/king/e/erikt/tolkien/2tower s.htm This link explains that Tolkien changed his mind about that a few times. Really, the name was rather forced on him, for a volume that he didn't want released in that manner anyway. Book 3 and Book 4 of Tolkien's six-book epic became "The Two Towers." Tolkien himself drew three different covers for the book, one showing Minas Tirith and Barad-dur, and the second and third showing Minas Morgul and Orthanc. So you might as well call it The Four Towers, as Tolkien changed his mind about which two the title refers to. Here's a Tolkien quote that shows that for awhile at least, the Two Towers the movie refers to were possiblities left deliberatly vague. "The Two Towers gets as near as possible to finding a title to cover the widely divergent Books 3 & 4; and can be left ambiguous- it might refer to Isengard and Barad-dur, or to Minas Tirith and B; or Isengard and Cirith Ungol (1)." [Letter #140] -J.R.R. Tolkien Later Tolkien did settle on Cirith Ungol and Orthanc, because of the text of books 3 and 4, but conceded that Barad-dur and Minas Tirith, seemed less confusing. I think, as long as it's any two of the four, you can't go far wrong. I can see easily how Jackson's choice of Barad-dur and Orthanc makes a great match. "There is now an alliance between the Tower of Orthanc and the Tower of Barad-dur." It spells out, in a simple sentence, the power of the threat to Middle-Earth. Wait a second. I just posted a Lord of the Rings factoid on Slashdot! Coal to Newcastle! You guys probably knew this when you were in Kindergarden!

Re:Any of the Four Towers are correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wondered about all that back in middle school, when I read the books. Afterward I couldn't remember which two towers he meant, considering how many towers there were. And the fact I couldn't keep the names separate, since the names are so foreign.

Thanks for the info.

Re:Any of the Four Towers are correct.

[thunderbee]

You guys probably knew this when you were in Kindergarden!
No, no, most people here don't have the skill to read the books.

stephan hawking

[berb]

saw this coming

Vanilla Holy War

[Dave_bsr]

I don't like butterscotch, but I do like vanilla. You don't see friggin holy wars over pudding, though, do you?

VANILLA! WHAT!?? WHAT! That's it, I've had it with you vanilla idiots. CARMEL FOREVER!!!

Does anyone know...

[bmurray]

... where I can get a leaked alpha version of MASSIVE?

Re:Does anyone know...

[Myco]

I'll trade it for a copy of that pre-release DVD-rip of the movie. No, not TTT. ROTK. :)

great idea...

[Dave_bsr]

this what you want?

It was for sale on ebay. That's all i could find, though. Google didn't have much, sorry.

Re:great idea...

[bitrate]

Here's a link to a bigger image of that same poster, if you want a closer look at it...

Re:great idea...

[netsharc]

The quote on the bottom of the poster says "You shall not pass!". That's strange, aren't they supposed to take quotes that are inspiring? I saw a Star Trek Poster once, which had "Boldly Go" as the quote.

It would be quite a downer for a student to have such a poster, studying for an exam in his room, and then looking up at the poster only to see "You shall not pass!".

This is nothing new.

[Qender]

I remember seeing a television show about this kind of logic used to animate some scenes from "The lion king". Apparently no one was able to animate a stampede of several thousand zebras by hand.

Re:This is nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like one of the Batman movies, the one with the Penguin. There was a herd of penguins running amok through the city, but they were all CG, with this 'logic' making them stampede correctly. Well, in the true nature of randomness, three of the buggers wandered off down an alley, while their comrades ran to attack Batman. Saw it on a Hollywood blooper type show last year.

Overall, of course, who cares if penguins wander off? But just wanted to sound important. :-)

Re:This is nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wildebeest. How dare you, sir. Wildebeest.

Re:This is nothing new.

[tolldog]

That is a bit different.
Collision avoidance is a different bird all together. They used something for 101 Dalmations (live action) as well.

Sure it has some AI and the character sort of decides where to go, but typicaly, the inputs to the system are current location, goal location, speed and location of objects around it.

Had they just wanted to run the two armys together, it would be similar to the systems used earlier. But the difference here is that they decide what to do when they get together, or if they even get together.

-Tim

Are They Serious?

[ragnarok]

Come on! Are these people for real?

We believe that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema's actions are in fact hate speech. The movie is intentionally being named The Two Towers in order to capitalize on the tragedy of September 11.

Um, you don't think maybe it was named for the book written like 30 years ago?

Re:Are They Serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

like 30 years ago

Actually it was written in 1954, 48 years ago. Close enough though...

Re:Are They Serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Come on! Are these people for real?

No these people are not real: they are done in computers.

Re:Are They Serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the OpenSrs WHOIS lookup:
(Looks like a troll to me-- the 1-800 phone number given is disconnected, and the registrant is Canadian, not American.)

Registrant:
two towers protest
32 pender street
vancouver, bc y6e3j2
CA

Domain Name: TWOTOWERSPROTEST.ORG

Administrative Contact:
towers, two twotowersprotest@twotowersprotest.org
32 pender street
vancouver, bc y6e3j2
CA
1 800 657 3499

Technical Contact:
wu, steve info@gotoecom.com
5066 kingsway
suite #210
burnaby, bc v5h2e7
CA
604-412-1503
Fax: 604-451-8611

Registration Service Provider:
Gotoecom Internet & Marketing Ltd., info@gotoecom.com
604-412-1503
www.gotoecom.com

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 23-Oct-2002.
Record expires on 15-Oct-2003.
Record Created on 15-Oct-2002.

Domain servers in listed order:
MYDNS.GOTOECOM.COM 209.139.214.250
NS.BESTDIR.COM 208.181.84.1

The Data in the Tucows Registrar WHOIS database is provided to you by Tucows
for information purposes only, and may be used to assist you in obtaining
information about or related to a domain name's registration record.

Misguided f*cktards or BlackHole Troll wannabes.

[Anonymous Coward]

the protest site says they believe Peter Jackson
is engaging in hate speech.
the petition site has all these signatures but you temporarly can't see them because of sircam
virus....they have been saying that since last
spring.
I think you can't see them because most of the
people who have responded have actually entered
comments telling them to get a life.
Truth is they are the ones soiling the memory of Sept 11 by attempting to attatch a bogus
issue to it.
Fortuneately no one is taking them seriously
and they are being ignored.
Looking forward to seeing " The Two Towers"

Re:Misguided f*cktards or BlackHole Troll wannabes

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach It Brotha!

Easy...

[Quaoar]

All they had to do to get a large crowd of filty obese creatures of myth was to film a comic convention.

Re:Easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or a Slashdot user meeting.

Next Version of Myth?

[Dhrakar]

The first thing that pooped into my mind when reading the article was that this could put a whole new spin on games like Myth. I mean if you could use a somewhat simplified version of the control nodes and behaviors to generate an army-- and your opponent (or the computer) did the same-- you could create some awesome battles. Even in the case of individual battles, the idea of better ai for each character is pretty compelling ;-) Oh, and for more fun, throw in some genetic/adaptive algorithms and watch as your characters get better and better...

Re:Next Version of Myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you put a new spin on a pixel hunt?

Re:Next Version of Myth?

[FeloniousPunk]

Some games are getting close to this. Have you played Medieval: Total War? The game tracks each and every warrior in your army - thousands of them, and all of them in your opponents' armies too. I know that the game rates the performance of each individual warrior in a battle and then modifies his bravery/ cowardice and effectiveness based on that.
This is quite a feat, considering how huge the armies and battles can get in this game.

Re:Next Version of Myth?

[tekunokurato]

I don't think the point here is really to be intelligent, just to simulate lots of people not all doing exactly the same thing. The Orcs aren't necessarily any smarter than, say, warcraft orcs are. But, they simulate fighting visually. I don't think it would change the way strategy games are played. It might actually make them dumber.

A token ting to go with it???

[anonymous cupboard]

Get a couple or more of these systems and then...

One ring to rule them all....

Sorry!

Re:A token ting to go with it???

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a couple or more of these systems and then...

One ring to rule them all....

One Tolkien ring, you mean.

Sorry!

No, I'm sorry.

(Posting anonymously for all the obvious reasons.)

Re:The advertising is wrong re: the two towers any

[rabiteman]

Tolkien's British publisher insisted on breaking up his 6 "book", 1 volume work into 3 smaller volumes of 2 books each (due to a paper shortage)...

Funny that, I always thought it was because nobody in his right mind would buy or read a novel of that magnitude. Granted the complete LotR pales in comparison to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, but nobody who reads that (myself included) can be considered in his right mind.

Sh*t for brains?

[D iz a n k Meister]

pooped into my mind

Re:Sh*t for brains?

[styrotech]

Maybe, but it's the first time the insult "potty head" has made any sense to me.

The problem with your argument

[Anonymous Coward]

is that you assume, in the form of moderation points, exactly what you set out to prove.

Gotta do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those. . .

----Whatever----

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that no one in their right mind would want to see this shitty movie if those brave souls hadn't crashed those planes into the WTC. People wouldn't even pay attention to the movie unless it was called "The Two Towers". This is an obvious money grab by Peter Jackson et al.

Re:----Whatever----

[Anonymous Coward]

Get real, The Two Towers does not read The Twin Towers.

Am I missing something?

The Twin Towers had planes crash into them, the Two Towers is a film based on a book, you wanna tell me its anything different, well talk to the hand cause the face ain't listening.

Kevin "Klerck" Ealy wrote that petition

[Anonymous Coward]

The petition is an enormous troll concocted by Mr. Homosexual-Extraordinaire himself. Notice at the bottom of it:

...written by Kevin Klerck.

The email address says: slashdotwidener@yahoo.com A whois on www.klerck.org returns the following:

Registrant:
Kevin Ealy
14 Stanhope Road
Goose Creek, SC 29445
US

Registrar: Dotster (http://www.dotster.com)
Domain Name: KLERCK.ORG
Created on: 27-AUG-00
Expires on: 28-AUG-03
Last Updated on: 27-AUG-00

I don't get it...

[MoThugz]

What's so big a deal about computer generated crowds? It's been done since computers are actively used for visual effects (remember the Skeleton Army from Living Dead?).

Yeah, sure they are more detailed nowadays... but that's the beauty of technology, everything improves over time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Tolkien and the LOTR movies, but I don't get how 6 pictures of scanned pages can generate such irrelevant headline on Slashdot.

Re:I don't get it...

[malducin]

Well, the deadite armies in Army of darkness were done more traditionally, mainly costumed extras and also miniature puppets, all in camera with no CG.

Computers were first used to replicate crowds of extras filmed over and over again in different locations, Braveheart is a good example of this. It was a bit later that CG crowds were used, though CG stunt doubles had already started appearing like in Executive Decision and the Batman sequels.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

the big deal is that until recently, those characters would have needed to be animated by hand, or by using motion capture. with a crowd of that size, animating each character individually would have been prohibitively difficult, requiring the animators to fall back on instancing, or even simple cloning of animation curves from character to character, with slight modifications for behavior, direction, and the appearance of randomness.

but this way, you can create a mess of characters, tell them which side they're on, and set them loose (essentially), without having to worry that groups will look the same, or worse, having to choreograph their movements individually.

Wow...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Where did that come from?

Wait, lemme guess... your DM killed your 73rd level Elf last night.

Because Work Sucks

[D iz a n k Meister]

and I'm bored.

3rd shift computer babysitting--I can feel my ass grow.

Re:Because Work Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You have work?

Don't knock it.

Re:Because Work Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey man, I hear you. Nothing's worse than babysitting a computer. Anytime I'm in that situation I always check out the Work Sucks website for some laughs.

Re:Because Work Sucks

[cramped bowels]

Don't click - the link is booby trapped!!!!!

Holy shit did you miss the point...

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Take a good long look at the subject of the post you replied to...

Re:Holy shit did you miss the point...

[buswolley]

oopss. An honest mistake for a tired man. I guess the tireless fighter for freedom of speech, that I am, drank too much.

You're Nothing but a Player Hater

[Anonymous Coward]

biatch

WTF is with the wide screen here on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

script kiddies at it again? I thought you fixed this months ago.

Game looks better than movie

[Anonymous Coward]

The Two Towers game trailer commercial looks better than the movie. The massive number of Orcs(?) pounding on their chest plates getting ready to charge is very cool and meaningfull to those who've seen the beginning of this army created in the first movie. I still like the Bashi version best though, with the wet haired, big eye, sharp toothed Gollum.

LOTR MASSIVE Crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

I know some of these LOTR nerds are fat, but there's reason to throw around hurtful words like massive.

What? It's not that?

Carry on.

Where to order FOTR Extended

[cgrayson]

According to my research, you can get the Extended DVD (list price US $40) at Amazon for $26. You get free shipping plus a "Movie Cash" ticket good for one admission to The Two Towers.

The other contender is Walmart.com. The price is the same, and you have to pay $3 shipping, but if you preorder, you get a free t-shirt.

I'm not affiliated with either, just sharing my findings (and hoping if someone else knows of better deals, they'll post back!)

Re:Where to order FOTR Extended

[Njoyda Sauce]

I just ordered mine from Deep Discount DVD. I chose this site based on a search from DVD Price Search.

Re:The advertising is wrong re: the two towers any

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd always thought that the meaning of the two towers changed through time.

Originally it was Minas Morgul/Minas Tirith, but at the time of TTT, it had changed to Minas Tirith/Barad Dur. The change occasioned by by Osgilliath being ruined.

applauding CGI pr0n

[No Such Agency]

Have to wonder, though - will the /. community cheer the said [pornographic] production similarly? ;^)

Well, that gives a whole new meaning to "the sound of one hand clapping"...

Autonomous computer animation

[heroine]

Autonomous computer animation is the future. Unfortunately, while it is intended to lower the amount of work required to achieve a scene, it's sure to be built up to a level of detail requiring the same armies of hundreds of animators that previous computer animation required.

Re:Autonomous computer animation

[Iamthefallen]

argh, you're forcing me into rant mode...

I really truly despise the view that CG is to make movies cheaper, IMO CG should be used to make movies BETTER. Remember Jurassic Park? Terminator 2? Both examples were CG was used to create spectacular effects that couldn't be made any other way.
Nowadays...CG is a cheap solution, that's why we see "explosions" that look like Office Clipart pasted on top of an object in MS Paint...

Maybe

[tswinzig]

because he's a hobbit?

Nothing new, you say?

[tswinzig]

Were these stampeding lions attacking each other with weapons, choosing which combatants to fight against, oh nevermind that have you even seen LOTR 2 yet? If not -- SHUT UP AND WAIT.

"Bible" studies

[zrk]

everyone I've talked to tells me it reminds them of the bible.

No thanks.

There...

[Anonymous Coward]

...are no colonies of your fucking wasted homeland, fool.

Re:There...

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT true. They still have Canada.

Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hard to believe since Jurassic Park sucked dinosaur eggs and LOTR rules. Just goes to show how misused and abused good tools are in the hands of hollywood lamers.

Re:lotr is great ? so what !

[guybarr]

LOTR is exciting, uses lots of CGI and the geek factor is high. I really can't wait untill the twin towers. When Hollywood makes great movies like this the whole MPAA trying to take away our rights thing doesn't sound so bad...

Holywood deserves pay for its products (cool or shity, as their costumers decides).

Holywood does not deserve to get control of every type of indormation exchange and information processing and usage, wether legal or not, wether movie related or not just because they need to protect their bottom line.

They are acting like a cancerous cell, which for it's own minute purpose will eat all the systems of it's sorounding organism. And (the US) society's immune system does nothing to stop them so far.

So yes, LOTR movies are nice (I personally am not so excited by CGI and special effects. A good story is more important IMHO), but this price is way too high. I will not pay it, and the world cannot pay it.

If the US cannot restrain its' media corporations, the rest of the world will find other means of information exchange and processing. To the ultimate loss of the US.

corrected karma math

[endoboy]

re-arranging slightly....

Does the article cover something of extreme interest to nerds? YES, duh! +2
Does the article cover some aspect that nobody knew about before? YES. +1
Is the article posted on a for-free fan site? YES. +1
Did the article come from an evil corporation? Popular Science is owned by AOL Time Warner and we all know how /. feels about them. YES. +5
Does the article cover somebody /. respects? WETA, yup, /. respects them. Hmmm... -2

That totals up to +3, and so is morally ambiguous

Re:corrected karma math

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the hell did you learn math?

Re:corrected karma math

[endoboy]

everything I know about arithmetic I learned from slashdot...

Re:The advertising is wrong re: the two towers any

[br0ck]

Granted the complete LotR pales in comparison to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, but nobody who reads that (myself included) can be considered in his right mind.

I guess I'm crazy because I read them too. I would highly recommend the Book-A-Minute version of the Wheel of Time books for anyone without extra time on their hands. (scroll down on the SF/F page for rest of the series)

Re:The advertising is wrong re: the two towers any

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that, I always thought it was because nobody in his right mind would buy or read a novel of that magnitude.
*cough*harrypotter*cough

Re: CGI Yoda has to look like the old Yoda...

[Cognitive Dissident]

Next up is the discussion of CG Golum vs. CG Yoda.

Not a fair comparison. Lucas has admitted that the CGI Yoda was deliberately 'dumbed down' to look like the puppet Yoda. When they made him 'realistic' he didn't look enough like Yoda. So they stiffened him up and made his ears wiggle like the puppet. :)

Gollum on the other hand is based on motion capture and made as realistic as possible.

I'd have modded you up.

[darylp]

Takes a bit of brains to work out why this is both On Topic and Funny.

Firstly, the Two Towers trailer features music cribbed from the movie Requiem for a Dream. This movie has, as it's climax, a harrowing scene involving Jennifer Connelly's smackhead character being forced to use a double-ended dildo on another nameless girl for the benefit of a crowd of leering men. The direction hollered at them being "Ass to Ass"

Now, the conversation on this article got on to CGI porn, the logical progression of realistic looking CGI scenes. So, why not use the technical ability of the people behind the FX for The Two Towers, and suggest a reinactment of the scene from Requiem?

It's a very clever posting, and deserves to be modded higher.

Re:I'd have modded you up.

[Kintanon]

I'll have to remember that for next time I'm playing "6 degrees of seperation" and have to connect Bilbo and Dildo...

Kintanon

Yes and no

[swillden]

Fuzzy logic assigns a proportion of truth (between 0 and 1) to each fuzzy logic value. A proportion of truth is not the same thing as a probability.

Fuzzy logic theory is just that, a theory, and in its pure form has nothing whatsoever to do with probability, but applying it to make classical logic decisions requires unfuzzing the truth values, and this is generally done by interpreting the values as probabilities.

For example, the software package that is the subject of this article does exactly this, I'm sure. Each character has a variety of fuzzy characteristics, like anger, but when it's time to figure out what the character is going to actually *do* the software derives a fuzzy value for the character's state of mind and then interprets that value as a probability, rolls a virtual die and converts the probability to a decision.

Logan's Run

[RatBastard]

Probably too old for most of you, but anyone else catch the Vulcan hand in the end of "Logan's Run"?

URL for the software: Massive Ltd.

[creynolds]

Stephen Regelous developed the software used at Weta for LotR, and later formed a company to commercialize it:

Massive Ltd.

They had a booth at the SIGGRAPH 2002 Exhibition.

Other Peter Jackson classics

[gavinjolly]

Personal favourites from Peter Jackson

Bad Taste - Filmed on the weekends (I understand). Favourite bit are "The Boys" with a Ford Capri and the giant Warfdale speakers in the back seat.
Braindead - For those who have seen this, when I walked out of the theatre, down the stairs, it was almost exactly the same layout as the huge gore scene in the house.

Peter Jackson usually makes a cameo appearance in his films. In "The Frighteners" with Michael J Fox he is in the scene where the dork husband has just died and is following Michael J Fox up the street (I am quite sure). Big Bearded Guy.

They can change the story all they like

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

If we get to see more of Arwen!

Bad Taste!

[styrotech]

"This looks like a job for the boys"

"You'll never guess what i had to do"
"Um, drink some sick?"

"I'm coming to get you fellas!"

Sorry, couldn't resist. A masterpiece of modern cinema that was.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ent's anyone?

[C. Alan]

Is is just me? Or has there been no mention of the Ents in any of the preview material. Will they be completly CG? C. Alan 'The ents crawl in, the ents crawl out, the ents play peanuckle on your snout...'

hollywood? or NZ?

[Anonymous Coward]

um isnt the twin towers a new zealand production?

Batman penguins and boids

[daffmeister]

Sounds like one of the Batman movies, the one with the Penguin. There was a herd of penguins running amok through the city, but they were all CG, with this 'logic' making them stampede correctly.

If I remember correctly this work was done by Craig Reynolds. Famous in A-Life circles for his boids algorithm for flocking birds.

In a nutshell, the each bird uses the following rules:

1. Match the velocity of the group
2. Move towards the centre of mass of the group
3. Move away from the nearest neighbour

Now, obviously, each rule gives a different vector (maybe even opposite for 2 and 3) which are then weighted and summed for the resultant motion. Stir and repeat. These simple rules give remarkably realistic looking results and are a good example of emergent behaviour which is the hallmark of A-Life.

Re:Batman penguins and boids

[Sri Lumpa]

"These simple rules give remarkably realistic looking results and are a good example of emergent behaviour which is the hallmark of A-Life."

Maybe geeks should do the same and then we could say that we have A-Life.

Re: CGI Yoda has to look like the old Yoda...

[malducin]

Yeah I actually heard that from Rob coleman himself. Not actually "dumbed down" but animated so it matched the puppet as closely as possible, in particular the ears as you mentioned, and the lip movements. But as far as other aspects, like skin shaders, compositing, etc. I say both are on about equal terms.

Besides you could make the other side of the arument. I doubt they mocaped anyone climbing down a sheer rock face head down first as shown on the trailer. I think there are articles saying that not al Gollum was mocaped, after all Randy Cook is animation supervisor.

In the end both are fantasy characters and look great.

Last Post!

[alpg]

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...