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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".
...but they still can't make Frodo look like a guy.
Purchase some of the servers used to render the CGI in the first LOTR movie here.
Own a geeky piece of history!
(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 :-/
(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.
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!
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.
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!
Does the article cover something of extreme interest to nerds? YES, duh! +2 /. respects? WETA, yup, /. respects them. Hmmm... -2 /. feels about them. YES. +5
Does the article cover somebody
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
That totals up to +7 (and I probably forgot a few things), so it doesn't matter if it's copyright infringement.
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.
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