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WETA Digital Operations Mgr. Talks Special Effects

Posted by timothy on from the and-a-one-and-a-two-and-a dept.

Xoanon (from TheOneRing.net) writes "I was recently privileged enough to view a lecture by Milton Ngan. As far as IT stuff goes, Milton has a pretty good job. You see, he is the Digital Operations Manager at Weta Digital. He is basically the architect for all the technical side of things at Weta. Last night he came and gave a 1 hour lecture at Victoria University outlining the hurdles and obstacles that needed to be overcome to produce the stunning 3D graphics lying in each of the Lord of the Rings movies. The lecture itself was full of lots of facts about Weta, the IT side of things and it also included some very cool behind the scenes shots of The Two Towers. The following is a detailed report from the event, where Ngan gave us an amazing behind-the-scenes look at WETAs infrastructure, their mainframes and various workstations. There is also a TON of info in regards to the special effects process, and news about MASSIVE. Take a look."

4 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Poor conflicted orcs... by aiken_d · · Score: 4, Funny

    When Massive was first tested two armies were pitted against each other to fight it out. Once the scene was rendered, a bug in the program was found. Agents were actually seen running away from the battle field! This simple bug was resolved by adding the rule "If you can't see an enemy, turn around".

    Oh no! I'm going to be killed! Run away! Oh no, no enemy in sight! Turn around! Oh no! I'm going to be killed! Run away! Oh no...

    Cheers
    -b

    --
    If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
    1. Re:Poor conflicted orcs... by NixterAg · · Score: 4, Funny

      Must have been originally coded by a Frenchman.

  2. MASSIVE to the rescue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe we could use MASSIVE to render Shrub's next Gulf War. Show it to him, tell him we won, and then we can move on!

  3. Re:I wonder if they know by spongman · · Score: 5, Funny
    We're not fooled, it looks really fake
    Yeah, I agree. It doesn't look like any other magic lantern light I've ever seen.

    wtf?