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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."
That if enough of us PAY to see movies like this one, MORE might be made?
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.
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.
RTFA. Massive isn't open-source and their is no mention of what hardware they used either. If this is a victory for anything it is the company for producing what looks to be like a very nice piece of software.
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!
When the guy has three arrows left and he shots five times, I cry foul.
Cry all you like. The underlying point of my previous post was that movies (and, by the same token, Itchy and Scratchy) are meant to be enjoyed. They're positively riddled with continuity errors as a result of the way they're made. So what?
Here, just to really get you excited, I'll throw you a couple of bones. During Boromir's death scene, his right hand appears and disappears from Aragorn's left shoulder about a million times. Or how about the magic disappearing pony? Or the way Merry and Pippin keep changing places during the scene in the inn?
None of these things detracts from the story, friend. Not a one of them. They're not important, they're not insightful; hell, they're not even really mistakes as much as they are harmless side-effects of the movie-making process.
Oh, and whatever you do, stay away from the climactic scene of Return of the Jedi. The smudges on Vader's helmet will no doubt send you into a fit of apoplexy.
I write in my journal
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
Actually, I am very much anticipating the Battle of Helm's Deep. Let me give you my good reason, and then my bad reason.
:)
The good reason is that, if I recall correctly (and I'm not positive I do), the three major battles in the Lord of the Rings are different: the Battle of Helm's Deep is about holding on with no reinforcements coming, the battle at Minas Tirith is heavy on Nazgul and is about holding out til reinforcements come, and the final battle is about dying valiantly in an effort to delay Sauron until Frodo can destroy the ring. So they do have different feels.
Anyway, the bad reason for why I am looking forward to the Battle of Helm's Deep is that I didn't really like the first LoTR movie that much. I was a huge fan of the books when I was younger (I read them, and the Silmarillion, dozens of times), but I felt that the movie lacked the sense of mystery and sadness (at the passing of the great ages of magic and elves) that the books had. To me, the magic of the written word could not be translated into the screen. I could imagine Gandalf somehow becoming more imposing, but seeing it in the movie seemed like a parlor trick rather than magic. Similarly, I could imagine Galadriel being somehow different and magical, but seeing her with a glow about her is just...too straightforward.
That being said, the one thing I loved about the movie was how beautiful it was. The scenes in that movie were astounding. And that's why I'm looking forward to the Battle of Helm's Deep.
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 agree. I noticed that a lot of the people who complained that the CG in Fellowship was bad were only complaining about the bits that had to be CG - the cave troll, gollum, the eagle. Most of the CG went completely unnoticed because it was so seamless and realistic.
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.)
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.
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.
Or maybe there just weren't than many 'coloured' people back in ancient england/euorpe where the story was set in.
Very different to the movie isn't it? Lots of unecessary, and not very interesting detail.
Yes, unlike film, books must convey ideas that stimulate all the senses in simple print. Authors strive to describe sights, sounds and scents using nothing more than pen and paper. Some readers relish such writing and pore over the pages word-by-word. Others just want to get to the action. To each their own.
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
People don't want to see character development. They want to see armour, swords, and gore. If you want character development, go see some French film about a fag that's in love with his ass.
That issue of the Onion is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my entire life. I remember when it first came out.
I mean yes, those guys have done a wonderful job of producing biting satire for years, but to tackle a subject that sensitive so soon after the event itself was something no one in their right minds would do. And yet The Onion managed to find small glimmers of dark dark humour in an otherwise depressing event while still paying great respect to those that lost their lives and not feeling like an attempt to wring attention out of a horrible event.
Using humour to pay respect to a tragedy like Sept 11th is an enormous challenge. The Onion made it looks easy.
I found this article in particular to be a perfect balance of the two: God Angrily Clarifies "Don't Kill" Rule.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
I've actually read the Silmarillion, and, indeed, I prefer it to the Lord of the Rings. However, it has to be said that I've also read the Old Testament, the Heimskringla and assorted other similar things. You can't approach the Silmarillion as if it were a novel. It isn't. It's a complete synthetic mythos, one of very few that exist, and probably the best.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.