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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".
C'mon CmdrTaco. We need one :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Cause thats how I determine what movie I wanna see; the crowds! Spend millions on crowds. Millions, I tell you!
"Old man yells at systemd"
...but they still can't make Frodo look like a guy.
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.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
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)
Purchase some of the servers used to render the CGI in the first LOTR movie here.
Own a geeky piece of history!
I thought the last ALL CAPS NAME was FORTRAN because computers finally supported lowercase characters after that.
(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 :-/
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?
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.
(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
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
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 =)
"Never put off for tomorrow what can be avoided altogether"
The Two Towers in the book are Orthanc and Cirith Ungol, not Orthanc and Barad dur.
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.
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.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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.
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.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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
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.
Well, that's easy. Yoda has the Force and a light saber, Golum has a lisp!
... you never can tell, can you?
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
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
CG Yoda would kick CG Golum's ass.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
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
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!
Not trolling, but the parent post touches on an interesting point.
/. community cheer the said production similarly? ;^)
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
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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.
... where I can get a leaked alpha version of MASSIVE?
I am not a Tolkien fanatic and not "wise in the lore" but didn't Tolkien write "The adventures of Tom Bombadil"?
this what you want?
It was for sale on ebay. That's all i could find, though. Google didn't have much, sorry.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
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?
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.
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?
Search first, ask questions later.
All they had to do to get a large crowd of filty obese creatures of myth was to film a comic convention.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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...
One ring to rule them all....
Sorry!
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.
Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned! Ask not for whom the bone bones; it bones for thee. -Bender
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.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Or sending the rocket through their house, and into the sheep behind it.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
****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).****
.. 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.
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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!)
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
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"...
Freedom: "I won't!"
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.
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."
...?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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.
"And like that
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! :)
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
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.
Working for necessity's mother.
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.
-nd
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-arranging slightly....
/. feels about them. YES. +5 /. respects? WETA, yup, /. respects them. Hmmm... -2
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
Does the article cover somebody
That totals up to +3, and so is morally ambiguous
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.
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.
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.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
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.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Probably too old for most of you, but anyone else catch the Vulcan hand in the end of "Logan's Run"?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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...
"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.
Maybe, but it's the first time the insult "potty head" has made any sense to me.
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.
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
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.
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 ;-).
;-). 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?
;-), though it was an interesting post you had there, even if I don't agree with some of it. Enough ranting peace!!!
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
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