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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.
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 :-/
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.
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
Damn, I thought they just used a bunch of unemployed dot commers...
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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!
Ahh, but what about CG yoda v. Gandalf. Now that would rock.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
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.
... 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?
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.
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...
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.
Yeah.
My deviantArt site
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.
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.
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...