LotR CGI army/battle engine

[Hakonarson]

Yesterday I went to the LotR exhibition at the local museum. This included ots of the models & props - weapons, armour, etc.

But of considerable interest was a video display on their Software engine "Massive".

This engine generates and controls thousands of 3-d virtual soldiers for any activity they might be needed - moving, fighting, dying, running away.

It drives most of the battle scenes - appart from a few "front rank" characters all of troops in the massed battles are CGI generated by this engine.

They had a few short video pieces showing off the features of Massive - different fighting styles for the different races, path and opponent seeking, terrain awareness, etc.

They also showed a few trials - including their first large scale battle where the 2 lines collided - and then a few figures started running away from the back of the battle lines http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Individual soldiers duelled, moved on to new opponents when they won, kept trying to stay alive when wounded, got knocked over, got up, died, had limbs and heads hacked off, etc., etc.

well you've seen the results youselves in Two Towers

Now when's a game software house going to licence something like this?? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Well Hako. I must admit to posting about Massive months ago, when the first featurettes came out for the first movie http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

And that was in the Tavern. Count yourself lucky, since I'm going to consider this as a part of "English Culture" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

That said, now I can add my reply

It is amazing how the engine works, and it does have some similarities with Total War. Just like TW, each CGI character made their own decisions, eg. whether to raise their sword whilst charging, whether to duck, defend or counter blows etc. In the words of Peter Jackson "We just clicked go and they fought each other."

That's also probably the reason no-one has used Massive yet. The scale of it must be considerably reduced. Apart from the amount of characters, there would need to be cuts in other aspects (think about Total War, you don't "see" blows being countered, men just "wave" their weapons at each other, if every man had to block/repulse/counter each blow it would be a huge program.)

By the time you have cut it down to size, you might find that you have something very close to Total War anyway http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Hakonarson]

Spoil sport http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif....and of course it'd be a huge programme - starting now something might be out in 3 or 4 years, by which time we'll all be sporting 8 GHz machines with 2 or 3 Gig's Ram, etc http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif