Slashdot Mirror
Massive Two Towers Battle
ShadowLight writes ""In December vast hordes of eager filmgoers will mob cineplexes across the land and witness, at the climax of The Two Towers, one of the most anticipated scenes in recent movie history: the great Battle of Helm's Deep." This article talks about the software, named Massive, used to create this 50,000 creature battle."
You can already download The Two Towers from various *cough* sources?
Repeal the DMCA!
The way I heard that the AI for the battle scene was programmed was such that every one of the creatures had a slightly different set of paramaters, with the same goal of maximizing damage, while minimizing casualties.
On the first run, every single one of the thousands of little AIs decided that the best way to minimize casualties was to turn and run away.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
I only hope they got around to hiring a script supervisor by the time they started shooting the footage for the second movie. LOTR was so full of inconsistencies it ALMOST detracted from the movie.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That if enough of us PAY to see movies like this one, MORE might be made?
And the coolest thing about it is that I did it 3 years ago when I actually read the book.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
got... to
This is sure to be a big box office draw, but 50,000 scantily-clad beach bimbo babes might do even better at the box office!
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
I hope they have some interesting features on the Two Towers DVD(s) related to MASSIVE. There was a bit on the Special Edition DVD of the Fellowship of the Ring, but not as much as I would've liked.
Sex - Find It
It is wonderful to see open source in an integral role in a popular movie such as this. This is just the beginning of the mainstreaming of open source, hopefully.
This software looks really l33t. Can someone score me a w4r3z copy?
In Return of the King, the final film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the climactic battle--yes, the Battle of Helm's Deep is just a run-up--is rumored to employ more than 100,000 characters.
Oh Hell Yes.
I can't be the only geek with a hard-on here can I?
Uh, what kind of monkey anticipates this battle? It's hardly ranks among the many battles in Return of the King. And at the end of the day there's plenty of similar stuff out there: braveheart, Ben Hur, yadda yadda yadda. Please spin down the hype reflex.
The "Two Towers." Now a software program called "Massive." No trend here.
My Vorpal Sword is bigger than yours.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In December vast hordes of very geeky, albeit quite eager filmgoers will mob cineplexes across the land...
Not to complain, but doesn't it make just a little more sense now? Thought so.
Just after the four Hobbits get past the watchman in Bree, on their way to the Pracing Pony, Peter Jackson appears on the right hand side of the screen, and announces his presence with a lovely belch.
To modelize an AI capable of behaving like a mob inflicting a maximum damage, they simply tried to reproduce slashdotted sites' apache logs.
Dan Koeppel, a film-school dropout, has written for Wired and The New York Times Magazine. Although a longtime Tolkien reader, he draws the line at The Silmarillion.
Wuss.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
This is a good thing. The last Star Wars finially convinced me that Lucas is a POS because I wasn't distracted by his "special effects."
Hopefully effects will now be more relevant to the story if we are taking cgi for granted.
My guess is TTT can hold it's own without the gee whiz cgi.
"Our perception of characters is very sharp, which makes it all the more difficult to get the subtle details of artificial life forms believable," says Karl Sims, a former MIT researcher whose 1994 paper, "Evolving Virtual Creatures," outlined the key challenge that digital animators grapple with.
They are quoting a Mr. Sims about virtual creatures? Right...
how hard is it to build yourself a checker script if you don't want to work?
yeah, i'm rude. you're paid. act like it.
Ok, to get it out of the way before someone else does; ;-p
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
but besides that point, on the second page, about half way down, they talk about how nobody really knew what was going to happen when "orc met elf" par say, so they just let it randomly play out. Friggin neat IMHO. So in theory, they could throw extra renders on of different battles for special edition dvds and such.... Imagine the posibilities (while you imagine a beowulf cluster of these).
Saitoh
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
In a momentous surge of self-denial, Timothy was able to restrain himself for a full 20 days before posting a repeat story about The Two Towers. Slashdot readers, rejoice!
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
How about a new category? "Movie SPOILERS". That way, I can filter out articles on it, so I don't have to accidentally read about "the most anticipated scene" in a movie that's not out yet, just in case I've been working very hard to NOT see anything about the movie, so that I can fully enjoy it when it finally DOES come out?
Damnit.
Oh by the way:
It's a sled.
They drive off the cliff.
It's a guy.
Rose lives, Jack dies.
He's dead.
Education is the silver bullet.
I cringed during the CGI sequences of "Attack of the Clones." I really liked Lord of the Rings. Please let this new scene be a breakthrough and not an embarrasing distraction.
The Two Towers Visual Companion, a movie tie-in, features a nice four-page foldout illustrating the battle's progress. (N.B. The book's foreword, by Viggo Mortensen (who played Aragorn), is worth a read. Maybe I'm a bigot, but I hadn't expected an actor's commentary to be so perceptive and nuanced.)
I think we're pretty close to this already. I remember watching the sept 11 planes hitting the towers and thinking it looked "fake" like a movie, simply because it was too incredible believe.
Someone you trust is one of us.
printable version o' the article on one page.
What is this Fark? This has gotta be some kind of record
However, it seems that fuzzy logic can have slightly different meanings in different contexts.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
This kind of reminds me of the middle-school "proms" we would have at graduation.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
The special features on the new Fellowship of the Ring DVD set has a bit to say on Massive as well. Pretty interesting stuff.. I hope at some point we get to see the various testing stages of these battles, when they didn't quite work out as expected. =) (The earlier comment about "actors" running away from each other as an example.)
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
RUNAWAY!!
In the star wars episode 1 big battle, it looked like a bunch of CGI fighting more CGI. Granted part were robots, but they all looked robotic. I felt nothing, and it was due to the obvious cgi and actions.
Sounds like Massive may do it right, assuming the graphics and actions are both believable. This sounds to be quite promising!
<HUMOR>
We still need to get Jackson to rename the movie, because he's obviously trying to cash in on 9/11!
</HUMOR>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
A 50,000 character particle system would run slower than Doom III!!!
This Massive stuff will be slow on the fastest next-generation movie theater accelerators even with tons of memory.
When the credits are rolling, the frame rates might be okay, but in the battle scene I bet they drop to around 24fps.
We may witness the birth of Agent Smith's (of Matrix fame) Ancestors. Agents are nearly independent reactive creations, using Fuzzy Logic (not to be confused with Dubya's Fuzzy Numbers) to simulate reality... if the battle were a reality.
Particle Technology such as that used in the Charge of the Huns in Disney's "Mulan" is now yesterday's fishwrapping-newspaper software, worthy of MST3K review.
okay, lesse,
Citizen Cain,
Thelma & Louis,
Crying Game
Titanic
The sixth sense
This game is GREAT!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
But I always knew that Tron was a revolutionary film, but everyone always just said I was crazy. "What audiences will see on December 18 marks another step on the road to creating digital characters that feel so real that viewers can't tell them from their flesh-and-blood Hollywood co-actors, a journey that started two decades ago with Tron."
End of Line.
However, it seems that fuzzy logic can have slightly different meanings in different contexts. Seatle Robotics: A Fuzzy Introduction explains that fuzzy logic lets a machine arrive at a definite conclusion "based upon vague, ambiguous, imprecise, noisy, or missing input information".
The introduction then goes on to explain that:
"FL incorporates a simple, rule-based IF X AND Y THEN Z approach to a solving control problem..."
This completely condtradicts the Popular Science article, so either one is incorrect or the meaning of FL is kind of.... fuzzy....
Stop me if I'm wrong, stop me if I'm wrong
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
I think most people saw it and thought the same thing. I know when I saw it I thought of Die Hard for some reason right away. It was amazing.
As time has passed I still fire up the video clips and am amazed that Hollywood has come so far. So far in that they could duplicate an effect like that without injuring anyone.
And right there is the point. We've become so enamored with what movies can do and bring us that we're to the point where it does mimic real life. If you extrapolate that out to the fantasy environment we're seeing things that man hasn't seen in a long time or ever.
For instance think of the work on Jurassic Park. We weren't around when the dinos were, but we have the best look at what they might have moved like. Amazing.
I can't wait for the next generation of effects.
Who needs Star Wars, real geeks know what they love! And it's not Luca, let me tell you!
My name is Lucas.. I created Episode 4. I live upstairs from you. I think you worshipped me before.
of the story of the programming team asked to create realistic scenery software for a helicopter simulator to be demo'd in Australia. They decided it would be cute to have herds of kangaroos that would scatter if the helicopter flew low over them, as in all those National Geographic documentaries. So they found some code from an infantry war game that already had the desired scattering behavior and re-used it, replacing the soldier images with kangaroo images. And sure enough, the kangaroos scattered on cue when the helicopter flew over -- and then the 'roos ducked behind a hill and fired shoulder-mounted missiles back at the helicopter!
Ok, I know I can't be the only one who wants a copy of this to run on my own. Fuck the Sims, I want MASSIVE!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
wasn't there more "participants" in the book?
Forget your piddly 100K of Orcs. I can't wait to see the CGI scene showing that horde charging the theatres!!
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
RTFA. Massive isn't open-source and their is no mention of what hardware they used either.
The software is running on a cluster of GNU/Linux boxes. That is what he is likely referring to, and while this article may make no reference to the operating system, device drivers, libraries, and compilers used both to compile Massive itself, and to support the cluster upon which its renders run, it is well documented in any number of places, findable by google, and such common knowledge by most who read slashdot that he probably didn't feel the need to elucidate further.
The growth of GNU/Linux in Hollywood, the financial industry (in which I work), and any number of other areas of serious computational endeavor is indeed a very big victory for free software and open source, and a glaring black eye for the likes of Microsoft. One of free software's strongest advantages is the way it facilitates rapid development, maintenance, and long term stability of in-house software (by avoiding things like coerced upgrades, arbitrarilly moving API targets, shoddy infrastructure, poor security, and other such costly and detrimental things that Microsoft & Co. are so well known for).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
At only $50 it is a steal.
Available for Mac OS X, Win32 and Linux.
AA Batteries and Beowulf Cluster not provided.
I love how some of the orcs when programmed for survival ran away, that's great. Adds realism, I think.
And for return of the king, 100000 guys? Holy crap, they'll kill their processors before they get that... And if they manage to do that, they'll kill the audience by overloading their brain!
I found it rather amusing that one of the quotes from this story says, "...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."
Some get it - some don't. You didn't.
In the star wars episode 1 big battle, it looked like a bunch of CGI fighting more CGI. Granted part were robots, but they all looked robotic. I felt nothing, and it was due to the obvious cgi and actions.
... something I doubt any of the LOTR movies suffer from, but I digress. :-)
Did you feel anything in the opening sequence of the Fellowship of the Ring, at the battle where Isildur cut the ring from Sauron's hand? If so, that would confirm your evaluation of massive (at least for yourself), and would quite frankly agree with mine.
OTOH Star Wars I and II were without feeling for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the computer animation and special effects, and everything to do with terrible writing, mediocre directing, and wooden delivery
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The real question is, Where's Waldo?
I know dude, can you believe they published the entire script to these movies in book form?! Talk about spoilers...
:)
I saw that in stores and was like, horrified.
I have been playing a game called "Medieval: Total war" and IT has thousands of combatants bashing each other with swords, in real-time, on a "simple" P4 laptop. Even though the game (cleverly) uses sprites, and the TTT render uses every 3d trick in the book, when I saw the LOTR:TTT trailer, I was surprised how under-impressed I felt. It is amazing that modern games can even come close to "feeling" like these scenes rendered at great cost and time. The game has the thrill of interaction,sure, but still amazing how it stole the awe of the TTT trailer for me!! Anyone else feel the same?
BTW, I wonder how long before we are playing games that look as good as TTT render?
underrepresented population actors. There are hardly any actors of color working in this film. Sure, label me a troll, but I hardly believe that Tolkiens universe is as lily white as this movie represents. Just my $.085 CDN.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
my friends,
This is my last post of slashdot. After seeing this, I have decided that life is not worth living. I loved Star Trek and Tolkien and then this happened.
Doing the real ctrl-alt-del,
nbfn
This is a real site...
not goat stuff
Yes, I know, there are quite a few differences, but it reminded me of this program which I spent a lot of time playing with when I was a kid hanging out in my dad's office at BBN.
I agree with you, I used the same package somewhere in between you two, and my son used it two years ago. Same results every time.
I heard the problem they are having is that the new versions of their software does not run with the present hardware. They hope the Coming Singularity will solve the problem and allow the new version to be launched.
OK, new category:
It sucked.
Good luck!
Here is an interesting article which addresses some of WETA's other issues in creating the film, and talks a little about their uses of Linux as their core OS.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
It runs on Irix and Massive is being ported to Linux. Quote: From the beginning of preproduction, Weta Digital has also used the IRIX OS-based Octane visual workstations to write extensions to Maya and create proprietary technology. This technology includes Massive, a custom-built crowd animation or "artificial ecology" system developed on IRIX and now ported to Linux that draws from a huge database of motion-capture data. (see here).
now go read the book.
What happened to your formatting?
Anyway.. i saw this the other day.. It seriously is the most desturbing thing I have ever seen. (and ive seen lots, im a regular reader of ogrish and goregasm and other such sites, nothing affects me)
this is just pure evil.
Oh my GOD. I am going to die. I cannot breathe. I am laughing so hard, tears are rolling down my face.
/. at work.
Thank you for posting this.
I really need to stop reading
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
That has go to be the most bizarre thing I have ever seen.
If I hear 1 cell phone go off during the movie, I will pull out a gun and blow the mother fucker away, or just simply tear their goddamn head off with my bare hands.
Bravo! Brilliant :)
I'm sorry, this is the royal swedish tenniscourt. There is no one living here.
Hey, MY name is Luca. I live on the second floor. You got some kinda friggin problem?!
Don't people ever learn? How many more people have to die before we stop using our cell phones during battle?
If memory serves, OSDN made them drop "We're smarter than you. Suck it" when they bought the whole thing. But if you Google for it you may find an older version of the FAQ stating that the whole point of the site is to lash out and prove your intellectual superiority.
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Please, please, please, let's have a new category for LOTR so that those of us who don't give a rat's ass about it can never see it.
Please, oh please oh please already!
And okay, yes, make a special category for me so you don't have to see my posts. Hardy har har, I beat you to it this time.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
at this review.
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you got it from the top of this page genius.
Wouldn't that only be -1/2? :)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
There's an elf, a dwarf, numerous orcs, a handful of ents, and several hobbits.
I used the same BRAIN program several times, and each time I get a slightly different result. My wife also has a slightly different result when she reads the book. Interesting...
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Is it just a coincidence that the biggest set of virtual humans in movie history is studied by a guy called Sims?
One wonders why they chose to employ artists to program the agents rather than use some kind of learning or genetic algorithm to improve their behaviour - maybe this will start happening in the future when the agents start getting really complex.
</geek mode>
<sarcy humourous mode>
One wonders when the time will come when you'll just be able to press a button and your movie will be generated for you. Surely it will be simpler to simulate hollywood producers first?
</sarcy humourous mode>
All I want to know is when can I get something like as a video game on my PC? (Have cluster, will frag)
err. nevermind ;-)
Privacy is terrorism.
Maybe in a few years when the Sims Online has run it's course, they can integrate the "Massive" program and have a huge battle at the end.
I would pay to see that.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
autopr0n doesn't use Open Source! Ever notice the MSSQL messages? That's why the chicks are skanky.
"A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head."
You mean a computer without a Microsoft operating system actually floats when you drop it into water?
Got to try that some time.
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
heres the real way to do it.
1) use the quake arena engin
2) create the battlefield.
3) allow a tone of people to assume a charactor.
4) charge them to fight in the movie.
5) invent a new kind of movie style gamming.
hell if you dont make anything from the movie . the plaers paying for the oportunity to play will rake in the dough.
use the gamers computers as the rendering engin for the charactors.
have a really good time.
a beowolf cluster that other people pay you to participate in.
(Nicked from http://www.brunching.com/fuzzylogic.html)
whatever
whatever LISTThis function returns one of the nine neo-boolean values used in fuzzy logic: true, false, maybe, sure, what, whoa, depends, look-let's-talk-about-this-later-when-we're-not-in -public, and elbows.
The value returned is determined by standard anti-random vacillation
routines.
reconsider
reconsider EXPRThis causes the program to evaluate an expression until such time as it feels reasonably sure of its conclusion. Depending on the system and expression, this may take a fraction of a second or an entire freshman semester.
while holdon
while (EXPR) BLOCK holdon (EXPR) BLOCKThis works like a standard while loop at first, but at some point the function realizes it's been bringing personal issues into the evaluation in an inappropriate manner and begins to evaluate the expression named by holdon instead in an attempt to appear reasonable.
goaway
goaway LABELThis causes the program to execute starting at LABEL, while making it clear to the program that you could care less whether it ever returned to the present execution point or not. Calling the apology function later may cause the program to return to the statement directly after the goaway, but it may also cause the program to exit entirely, depending on how much you've been taking it for granted. Use of this function has been generally deprecated since the publication of the landmark essay "'GOAWAY' Considered Thoughtless."
pile
pile LISTThis function takes a LIST and sorts it until the function realizes there are too many items in the "miscellaneous" category and tries to figure out a better sorting scheme, then gets bored and leaves a big pile of unsorted items at the end. Returns a semi-sorted list with a big pile of unsorted items at the end.
grudge
grudge VARIABLEThe grudge function causes a program to develop an immediate dislike of the named variable, causing many operations involving that variable to return false for no apparent reason.
pedestal
pedestal VARIABLEThis causes the program to attach unhealthy significance to VARIABLE. The program will consider the named variable to be a microcosm of its own existence and will fall into a deep depression if the variable is undefined, ignored, or treated poorly. Both grudge and pedestal can be used on the same variable, causing the program to develop a love-hate relationship with the variable in question. This can be fun.
skim
skim FILEHANDLEThis function quickly looks over the data contained in FILEHANDLE, trying to get the gist of it and looking for any dirty bits or clever quotations it can use at parties to impress people.
oblique
oblique PLAINTEXT, WITThe oblique function uses a form of lossy encryption to convert PLAINTEXT into a witty-but-obscure cultural or social reference which will only make sense to people or processes that share a similar background with the calling program. WIT is a number between 0 and 7 which determines the cleverness and obscurity of the reference, where 0 will return a catchphrase from a recent television advertisement and 7 will return a reference to The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. With careful application, this function can be used to create entire online humor magazines.
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
-
To avoid surprises, Massive programmers weeded out ineffective agents and duplicated ones that worked. About a dozen initial master characters formed the basic genetic blueprint for more than 50,000 digital creations, which were then individualized by adding random variables such as aggression or happiness. (A few update Tolkien; 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.)
At least they're not calling in an air strike, like Granada."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Can Jackson do with his puppets, what Lucas did with his?
I saw an entire tech company destroyed by that video. Someone mailed it around the office and reduced all the programmers to gibbering drooling idiots, incapable of ever writing another line of code.
There is another allusion in there, but I didn't get it. Oh well.
from the December issue of Time Magazine with LOTR:TTT on the cover.
I am pro-lifechoice.
Yesterday I went and saw James Bond. There was a whole bunch of action movie previews (including LOTR) before that, where you could (barely) tell that all the action sequences were CGI... And I thought that now that they can do basically anything with CGI we are going to go back to good story lines to distinguish movies. No more 'the story was so-so but the effects where great'. Now that all the movies have effects for anything (explosions, fights, monsters, impossible scenes, dead actors...) they won't be able to do better only based on the effects. The newer Star Wars proved that. As effects become more commonspread and cheaper, I hope the money goes to the (good) story writers.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I think the assumption is that since the book has been out for (checks book) 48 YEARS if teh date in my edition is correct, that the story is pretty well read and known by now.
You do realise this whole thing is based off Tolkien's books, right?
Actually, there is a plot. There are five parts.
Ainulindale, the music of the Ainur. It began with Eru, the One, whom the Elves call Iluvatar. His thoughts became the Ainur, the most mighty of whom were called the Valar (the others were Maiar). As Iluvatar created and shaped Arda, the world, Melkor, mightiest of the Valar, tried to shape the world in his image, to achieve dominance. He rebelled against Iluvatar and was from then on known as Morgoth.
Valaquenta. Mostly an enumeration of the fourteen Valar (after his fall, Melkor was not counted among them), and the most important of the Maiar, such as Sauron and the Balrogs.
Quenta Silmarillion. Something about two lamps being destroyed by Morgoth and the Sun and Moon being created to replace them. The First Age starts with the creation of the Sun and ends with Morgoth's final defeat by the Valar. There's some stuff about Silmarils in there, too.
Akallabeth. As a reward for their service to the Valar, the men who fought with them (the Dunedain, "men of the west") were given a great island which they called Numenor. They built a great empire, but were deceived by Sauron, who told them that if they defeated the Valar and took possession of their forbidden land, Valinor, that they too would become immortal. The last king of Numenor, Ar-Pharazon, tried this, and the Valar called upon Iluvatar to reshape the world. Numenor sunk into the sea (though a few escaped), and Valinor was removed from the plane of the world.
Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age. Sauron forges the twenty rings of power. The Last Alliance of men and elves defeats him, ending the Second Age. Isildur refuses to destroy the ring; he is killed by the orcs and it is lost. It passes to Gollum, and that's where LOTR begins.
This is from a quick skimming of The Encyclopedia of Arda. See, when "Gil-galad" or "Morgoth" are mentioned, I can look them up and find out what the heck he's talking about.
If someone has actually read the Silmarillion, feel free to correct me. I'm leaving out quite a bit and possible screwing other stuff up. (For instance, the dwarves were first-created after the Ainur, but the elves awoke first.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Hehe, I wouldnt say gay but pipin looked like a woman.
I liked the movie but I did think parts of it were half-assed considering it is based on a very famous novel. I think the battle scene in this next episode (TTT) will be really good. =)
Pixels keep you awake!
We run the dates around the other way here i.e. date/month
The 9th of November has already came and went.
Breakfast served all day!
It's the cripple.
It's himself.
The butler did it.
Nathan
*crickets chirping*
I think that will replace the monsters in my nightmares.
--
"I've figured out what's wrong with life: It's other people." -Dilbert
Helm's Deep is about holding out until the Ents come. Minas Tirith is about holding out till Rohan comes, then holding out some more till Aragorn comes with the reserves of Gondor. The final battle is about holding out till the Eagles come, and holding out some more till Frodo sneaks up under sauron and bites off his 'nads. Eeew.
But you're right in the larger sense that they do have different feels.
Take your pills, lie down and think about your 'happy' place...
The only one I knew who was wounded by enemy, rather than friendly, action was shot in the ass by an irate farmer, armed with a shotgun, who thought it 'them damn kids' after his livestock again.
Best Slashdot Co
Just curious if MASSIVE is a D20 system... Mmm.. Improved Crit with a masterwork Scimitar weapon focus and Great Cleave.. IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!!!!
I want to see an Ent beat the living crap out of Julia Butterfly Hill.
"Get those nasty feet off me, pathetic human!"
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
You guys are in looooove!
Thanks for ruining my life, you... you...
The elven chicks were hot though. Too bad they were ripping off each others clothes behind the hill.
I read the series when I was a teenager, and have held off reading it again recently because I want to be surprised during the movie. I don't want to hear the details of major scenes of any of them before I see them in the theater either.
Too bad everyone one else who replied wants to see every detail in the trailers months before the movie even comes out. And for all the movies they watch, not just LotR. Probably learn all the cheat codes for their games before starting to play too. Lame.
And, unfortunately, this is the Lone Gunmen Are Dead site. Possibly spoiling someone's enjoyment of a widely anticipated event is what they feed on somedays.
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The saddest part of it is, I think that they were supposed to be Vulcans, Nimoy included.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
24 fps is what movies are shown at.
24 of those little film cells run past the light projector every second. However, if you could count the flashes of light on the screen, you would see 48. This is because, for every cell, an inverted fan with two non-blades (*), allows the light to pass through the lens twice. hence, each cell is flashed on the screen twice and the effective fps is 48.
I was a projectionist here in santa cruz for a while about 5 years ago. Fun job, basically just paid to smoke and start a few movies every few hours. Plus I got to toy with the sound in the theatres. I used to crank it up for the mib closing track.
(*) picture a fan with two blades. Now picture a metal ring connecting the outside of the fan blades. Now invert the fan-blade, no-fan-blade spots (ie, there are two holes which are smaller than the spots that don't all the light to pass through), and you've probably got a picture of this thing in your head.
Peter Jackson may not put it in the credits, because it might make other people feel too much envy, but he's releasing this movie not only on an evening that I have off, but on the anniversary of my birth oh so many years ago. Anyone who would like to buy me a ticket ... well wait, on my birthday, won't they let me in for free?!
Thanks, Pete.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The name THE TWO TOWERS is incredibly offensive to me! The movie making industry is obviously trying to profit off the 9/11 terrorist attacks!
;)
Make your voice be heard! Sign this petiton...
I don't know if this is what you're getting at or not, but wouldn't it be cool if rather than UI, all 50,000 characters "filmed" in the movie were controled in some kind of realtime online battle game made specifically for the "filming" of the scene? And then you'd get to try to find yourself in the battle when the movie hit theatres?
Unfortunately half of the creatures would be spinning in place or jumping up and down and making gestures. But hey, it *could* be cool.
This is why /. needs a special "6" score for certain posts. God damnit, that's fricking funniest thing I have ever seen!
I like how the MIT researcher's name is "Sims"
i hope i get the dildo that modded parent offtopic in metamod
You do realize you don't read every book in the library through telepathy just becuase you're within telepathic range of the library, don't you?
Handle with care. I read LOTR so much time ago that I forgot all the details. I'm trying and making a huge effort not to remember anything. Would be nice not to see many spoilers and still be able to have a discussion about the visual effects and other generics that do not tell what will happen.
unfinished: (adj.)
Had I also been available for those 60 years I might have read them.
I created several battle simulators that are even bigger in scope. Every character had one of the following AI's:
1. Dead
2. Die as fast as possible
3. Commit harikiri
My simulator can realistically portray the unneeded death of millions of characters.
Waffling away from the actual topic, I feel this entire scene is going to be disappointing. Rumor has it that the battle for Helm's Deep is going to be over a half hour of film.
Oy. I bet they'll have Neo, erm, I mean 'Legolas', doing Elven Ninjitsu, too.
I'm disgusted by Jackson's focus on shiny pointy objects. Tolkien did not write action; Helm's deep was a single chapter. (For the love of Eru, the legendary battle between Morgoth and Fingolfin was over in a select few paragraphs!)
Oh, I understand, things need to be changed to translate a book to film. But what, pray tell, will they leave out? Everything they shouldn't. All the character development, the friendship between Gimli and Legolas, et cetera.
And they'll repackage it all and sell it to us again a few months after as some sort of 'special edition'.
Boo.
I want to see MASSIVE orgy
Seems to me that it's the other way round. The WTC was obviously trying to trade off the good name of LoTR.
The irony never ceases to amaze me that a country that was colonised by a European trying to show that world extended past the horizon, is so firmly convinced that the world stops at its borders.
Don't believe the nonsense, unless you hear it from me directly.
What does MASSIVE do, aside from putting professional movie extras out of work? Just curious.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
"It was him" doesn't actually cover Memento. For that one, "It *wasn't* him" is correct.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
After I stopped laughing at the parent post, I had to ask myself *when*, not *if*, this actually might be the way movie theaters work.
.WAD file. I can easily see the day when a photorealistic movie could be generated solely by the computer.
After all, if you can really generate a scene completely in software, it probably takes a LOT fewer bytes to describe it than the raw imagery. How big was the entire source material for Final Fantasy? I'd bet it was a LOT smaller than a fully-digital movie at full theater resolution.
Taken to its logical conclusion, I wonder how far away the day will be when a "movie" as delivered to the studio is actually merely the script, along with a bunch of texture files, character maps, landscape grids, MIDI files, etc., essentially a huge
To karma whore for a second, too, it's interesting to note that if the movie theater rendering system that drove this method were sufficiently more advanced than the average user's home PC, it would make it completely impossible to pirate a digital movie on a 1-for-1 basis - you'd only be able to capture the rendered film, and have a much larger digital file to handle. What a bonus for the movie industry that could be.
A final thought about this idea. Assuming that the hardware in each theater were not identical, and even if they were, it's entirely likely that each time the film were projected (hence rendered then projected), it would be slightly different. Hmmm.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
So far, the characters driven by these systems don't have real physics. They're mostly canned animation sequences being keyed by a state machine. Often, the moves are motion-captured and blended; otherwise they're created by animators. It's more of an automated cut-and-paste at the motion level than general motion generation as in robotics. The motions generated wouldn't necessarily work in the real world, but from a distance, they look good.
Incidentally, doing software for Hollywood is a pain. Hollywood film projects have two modes. Either the project is in development hell and they don't have any money but want freebies. Or the project is in production and there's plenty of money but no time.
f**ken kewl,
nuff said,
that is the most impressive thing i have ever seen,, and the article lays it out awesomely
but the hollywood infrastructure is such that writers are almost at the bottom of the food chain. Effects studios are definitely at the bottom, but once a script is sold the writer has very little, if any, control over it.
Next time you go see a movie, try and think about what was stupid and what might have worked if X or Y was different about it. You'll see that there are many promising scripts out there that get ruined by bad actors, directors, etc.
I'm not a screenwriter or an insider or anything, but I've had ambitions for a while, but decided that it was probably the most frustrating job in the world, to have your ideas taken and twisted around until they're an unrecognizable pile of steaming crap, for basically peanuts.
So I decided to go into CGI. God knows what I was smoking when I decided that one.
When Yoda was babbling on about fear, *this* is what he was talking about.
"Oh no!.... Wait, they're helping us...!"
Ah, I cough up scarier things before breakfast.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
At first I tried to close the web page but my hands wouldn't move. It's just like when you're going down the freeway and see an accident, and no matter how hard you try you can't look away...
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Actually, it's a pretty catchy tune.
I might actually see Twin Towers now, just to hear that theme song again.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
...and it was rejected. I'm confused.
EA: as I originally heard it, Winston Churchill said to Lady Astor "Yes, madame, it is true. I am drunk. But you are ugly, and in the morning I will be sober."
Kinda has a better ring to it at the least. Just thought you might like to know.
(I really need to learn how to send a message to someone. I thought you could do that in the new slashcode)
I for one look to the day when nations can resolve their differences with such software rather than actual warfare.
There is no excuse for sacrificing young lives when a simple computer simulation would show the world exactly how the USA would kick their asses deeply into the dirt.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
When is this technology going to be incorporated into games? I want to raise an army and send it against my foes!!
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Lord of the Cock Ring has been the named dubbed to a very, very off broadway play in NY. Its somewhere down in the village, I think Tribeca area. I really can't remember, I was rather drunk. A search of google or Timeout.com should find it though.
book 1 is slow
books 2->6 are much better and well worth the wait
--meh--
Sim-ageddon?
I would definitely pay money for a Sims(TM) "End of Days" expansion pack.
The backgrounds and the various vehicles were CG in Tron; everything else, esp. the characters and the "glow" suits (made mostly of foam latex iirc) were illuminated and colorized with mechanical animation masking techniques -- each on-screen frame with glow suit characters and CG background were laboriously composited on animation stands with handmade (!) opague stencils and different colored gels for the "glow" layers. Thus, TRON, while deservedly acclaimed for its spectacular CG pioneering efforts, did not as such really venture into CG character animaton.
Pixar's TIN TOY wasn't until 1988, and before that there really hadn't been anything remotely credible in the way of CG animated human (or truly realistic animal) characters, flexing skin and kinetic joints with tension, etc. Can you think of anything appearing before 1988 which had actual computer animated humans in it?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Umm.. no. Scenes for FF:TSW were around 2+gigs per frame.
Wire doggy!
The book is just not that simple, however you must understand that it was written in the desire to restore the English folklore that was lost to us when the Normans invaded. This is critical in understanding what the book is about.
:)
It is also obvious that the Hobbit lifestyle is drawn from the English, but this *does* *not* make the Hobbits and allegory for the English...
Za Moosey!
A friend of mine, coder of "Commandos", tells a similar story: They put in a new character, a lion. To build it they adapt the "soldier" class, cutting all the human behaviors off... almost. During the first integration test, the lion suddenly sit down on a ladder, took out a cigarrete and smoked it. Coder team is now shorter.
I'm getting lightheaded just reading this thread now.
Put head between knees.... deep breaths....
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Nope not just the USA. Try England, Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia.
Those are all countries that I know of that people who were born in those countries tell me that the same stereotype manifest itself in their countries too..
Besides most Americans are thankful for the French for helping us out during the Revolution.
And go Google. French has had many more surrenders then wins. French Indian War, Franko Prussian war,
just to name a few off the top of my limited knowledge.
"The Orc battle cries for the Helm's Deep battle sequence were provided by a stadium of 25,000 cricket fans, who screamed the war chants, spelled out on the Diamond Vision screen, with Jackson himself leading the crowd."
Read the rest at imdb.com
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
A little off topic, but I have a question for LOTR fans. I've just finished the book, down to the very end. But seeing the map, there's something bothering me about the logic of the story
In the map, I can see that Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, the Cross Road, Minas Morgul, Cirith Ungol, and then Mt. Doom went almost in a straight line. So, it's only logical for me that the great battles should take place somewhere in this line, rather than far north in Morannon.
When Frodo arrived in the Black Gate of Morannon, Gollum argued that Sauron's attention would be concentrated in the north. 'He thinks no one can come to the Moontower without fighting big battles at the bridges, or getting lots of boats which they cannot hide and He will know about'. Off course Gollum was probably lying, but to me that statement was very ridiculous. After all, though he had enemies all round him, Minas Tirith was the nearest and that path was the most logical
When finally the Captains of the West captured the Crossroad (without big battles at the bridges, nor lots og boats), they again make a ridiculous move by riding north for several days to knock Mordor at their 'front door'. Off course Gandalf supposedly try to drive Sauron's attention away from Cirith Ungol where Frodo would pass, but actually he should know (by Faramir's account) that at that time Frodo was long gone from the pass
And then a logical move for Sauron is to take back the Crossroad (instead of moving his army to the north) and then either chase the silly army from behind of attemp another strike at Minas Tirith. After all he still outnumbers his enemies many time over at that point
Well, that's what's bugging me, hope someone could give a logical explanation
Re: Bond - well that's your opinion.
:)
I personally didn't even notice the special effects. I thought they were fine.
And I liked this Bond installment.
It's not often you see Bond being tortured during the opening credits
I thought it did well to put the gadgets back into the background. Bond movies sometimes fall into the trap of making it all about the gadgets saving the day. It's really always been about Bond, and this movie puts it back in his lap. It's his driving skill, and not just the cars gadgets which put him on top, for example.
YMMV
the email address for the creator of the site is: slashdotwidener@yahoo.com for Christ's sake!
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Wait, he killed his own wife?!
/reads Salon article Oh shizznizz! I missed the whole sammy jankis was him thing!
I didn't get that at all!
Time to go see that movie again!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I decided to finally become a full Slashdotter, and start making Friends. Congrats on being the first on my list. It may be a mixed blessing for you, as I have been told my political/social beliefs are bad. But, what the hell, eh?
Don't forget Porsche cashing in with the 911.
Actually, when watching the trailer I started thinking weather or not the messages on it would be used for political propaganda. Just watch it and replace:
:p
Bush for Gandalf
Blair for Aragorn
The riders of rohan for the United Nations
Bin Laden for Saruman
The King of Rohan for the EU
Sauron for Saddam
Its puzzling about how much sense it makes
I had to ask myself *when*, not *if*, this actually might be the way movie theaters work. ... I can easily see the day when a photorealistic movie could be generated solely by the computer.
There are "movies" being distributed now that work very similar to the way that you have described.
These are not big productions, though, and they are definitely not photorealistic.
If you are interested, there is at least one web site devoted to the movies: Machinima.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Your argument is pretty amusing, since you seem really obsessed with pretenging[sic] the OS is somehow central to 3D rendering. It isn't. The three most important things are the quality of the CPU's floating-point unit(s), the quality of the rendering software, and the ability of the compiler to generate efficient FP code for the target platform.
Carrying on about the 'raw speed of the operating system', and other inane drivel, just exposes your ignorance.
Nonsense. An Operating System is critical to any userspace program that runs upon it. It is the foundation upon which everything else is built, including the 3d software you assume to be the center of its universe. The free operating systems your Microsoft mind has so much trouble grasping deliver vastly better performance, clustering capabilities, and stability to those 3d applications than the overrated, overpriced, and underperforming dreck emitting from Redmond.
To recap your extraordinarilly pathetic argument in terms accessible to even your small mind:
"our argument is pretty amusing, since you seem really obsessed with pretending the FOUNDATION is somehow central to INTERIOR DESIGN. It isn't. The three most important things are the quality of the FURNISHINGS, COLOR CHOICES, the quality of the DESIGNER, and the ability of the DESIGNER to generate ATTRACTIVE INTERIOR DESIGN.
Carrying on about the 'support of the foundation', and other inane drivel, just exposes your ignorance [of basic architecture]."
Your assertions as to the irrelevance of an operating system to the performance of the software running upon it, be it 3d software or anything else, (much less the c and c++ libraries said software is linked to, and likely make up the bulk of the binary code that is any application, 3d or otherwise) exposes your woeful ignorance of basic computer science, software, and operating system design. Grow up and educate yourself on the topic before spewing such nonsense in the future (but what am I saying, your an AC on slashdot, and likely a troll to boot. A successful troll perhaps, but that does nothing to negate the fact that you are and remain in addition, on this subject at least, an ignorant fuck.)
Guess it's already been /.-ted :(
"We're sorry, but we can't find the HomePage you've requested."
Any kind sole made a cached copy (Google has none either *sniff*)?
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Yeah, I thought the other posting was saying that it was Lenny that killed his wife. God that was such a good movie. Definitely required multiple viewings to catch everything. I also liked the use of black-n-white versus color to merge the two timelines (one going forward, the other backward) at the end. Brilliant!
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186) ....
that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick"
checks before you go to bed
-- Herbert Rosmanith
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