News from Massive Software

Massive 4.0, Supporting V-Ray Rendering, is Now Available

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award ^®-winning 3D animation software for AI-driven characters, has released Massive 4.0. The latest release includes support for popular V-Ray rendering, new terrain nodes, enhanced brain nodes and agent fields, and many more features and improvements.

Massive allows artists to create and direct anything from CG humanoids to birds, animals, cars and more to deliver realistic and emotive virtual performances. Massive “agents” are 3D characters that use sight, sound and touch to interpret and react autonomously to the world around them. Massive incorporates procedural animation and AI, and is used by professionals in animation, visual effects and design visualization.

“Massive 4.0 is a major release that brings both creative and pipeline flexibility to artists and studios, and fulfills a number of enhancement requests from the Massive community,” said Massive Founder and CTO Stephen Regelous. “We’ve added Terrain nodes, V-Ray support, Python GUI support, Hair/Fur clumping, deep shadow maps, better placement for stadiums, and many other improvements.”

Feature Highlights in Massive 4.0

Terrain Nodes — Use an unlimited number of .obj files for terrain geometry; not only for the ground on which Agents walk, but also for walls of buildings, render-only geometry, collision-only geometry and other special purposes.
V-Ray Rendering — Supports this popular renderer, ideal for scenes requiring highly realistic lighting, in the same highly-efficient manner as RenderMan, 3Delight, Air and Mental Ray. Massive generates .vrscene files for the main render files, and for the terrain and agent archive files. It also automatically generates shader dialog parameters for V-Ray material plug-ins and V-Ray materials, giving users complete freedom to assign any available default or custom plug-ins and materials.
Enhanced Agent Fields and Variables — It is now possible to vary each Agent's response to Agent Fields individually using scale and offset parameters such as distance or color. A new plus button in the variables tab makes it easier and more convenient to handle large numbers of Agent/Group variables.
Place Tools — Stadium placement is even easier with the addition of rows and columns to the polygon generator, which allow for locators to be placed in rows and columns in any shape. The polygon generator also offers a handy stagger parameter, which can be used to offset rows laterally.
Hair and Fur Enhancements — Use Deep Shadow Maps to realistically render longer hair and fur and generate high quality self-shadowing; and Hair/Fur Clumping to generate messy, lumpy, or even wet hair or fur.
Brain Node Improvements — Control delay time and filter width in the output node with other nodes in the brain, using new options to select between “latch,” “delay,” and “filter” as destinations for alternative inputs. To simplify multiple inputs to an input node, a new feature adds values together.

Avatar, Weta Digital & Massive Plants

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

James Cameron's Avatar is the talk of the moment! Here at Massive we are especially proud of the work that Weta Digital have spent the past three years. Massive was used to create the crowds of creatures, humans and in a world first to fill the jungles with plants and trees. Congratuations to Weta Digital for once again taking Massive where no one else has. For more information about Weta Digital's work on the film, including a whole section on the Massive plants and trees, head over to CG Society.

Yahoo Movies have posted an epic behind the scenes look at how they created the world of Pandora. Massive doesn't get a direct mention but there are a bunch of Massive shots in the footage

Massive at SIGGRAPH 2009

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Massive will be presenting at the Pixar booth in the main exhibition hall at SIGGRAPH this week. Please stop by, grab a seat, and introduce yourself to us after the talk.

2pm Tuesday, 4th August, Pixar Booth
2pm Wednesday, 5th August, Pixar Booth

Both presentations are identical, and are split into two parts:

PART 1: 'Shading the Masses' - Mark Thielen, CG Supervisor, Radium
How to maximize the look of the crowds of characters with well designed shaders and textures. Using Massive, one can create unique looks quickly with the ability to make adjustments at the shot level.

PART 2: 'Filtration' - Daniel Maskit, Senior Technical Director, Digital Domain
A discussion of a set of tools designed to allow lighter's visualization and control over rendering of Massive crowds while working in Maya. This presentation shows a portion of the lighting pipeline for 'Mummy 3.'

Thanks to Pixar for the invitation, and to Mark and Daniel for presenting.

Online Massive training with fxphd

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The great folks at fxphd have just announced their July 2009 courses, and Massive features not once but twice! Other than a 10-week course with quicktime tutorials, assets and private forum access you also get your own license of Massive to use for the duration of the course.

The MSV 101: Introduction to Massive course is still going strong - it's the third time they've run this course - and they've also announced a new course - MSV 201: Massive in Production. Both are being run by Massive guru Geoff Tobin of Weta Digital who has been using the software since it was first developed for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Full details at fxphd.com.

2500 Ships, 70,000 Soldiers, One Historical Epic: Frantic Films on John Woo's Red Cliff

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Frantic Films just finished doing a whole bunch of shots for John Woo's historical epic Red Cliff. For full details check this link:

http://www.pitchengine.com/franticfilmsvfx/frantic-films-vfx-battles-john-woos-red-cliff/15085/

We Won! Massive wins Innovative Software Product 2009 at New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Lillian Grace, Manager of Corporate Projects with Israel Cooper, Director of Finance (center) accept the award

We're very happy to announce that Massive Software has been awarded winner of the Innovative Software Product Category at the New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards 2009. The gala dinner, held on Friday 1st May in Christchurch, saw a range of New Zealand based technology companies competing for awards in 12 categories. This year over 160 companies entered - a record for the event. Here's what the judges had to say about us:

"Massive, is recognised for the contribution their work in "simulation of behaviour" will have on the future of virtual worlds in applications other than just entertainment. It's about business model transformation that has positioned massive for success."

We'd also like to congratulate Biomatters Ltd who were awarded co-winner spot in the same category. For a full list of winners and finalists visit the Hi-Tech Awards website.

Massive Software Hires Former Legion CEO, And Moves Into “Real World” Simulation Markets

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award®-winning 3D animation software for AI-driven characters, today announced the appointment of Kevin Mannion as VP Product Strategy and Israel Cooper as Director of Finance.

Most recently Mannion served as CEO of Legion, a leading software company known for transportation and pedestrian planning for the London Underground, Beijing Olympics, and other large simulation projects. At Legion, Mannion drove the commercialization of the software, making the company profitable within eighteen months and winning major contracts. His industry exposure includes enterprise, infrastructure, database, web services and networking technologies.

Cooper was most recently a finance and corporate strategy specialist with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Prior to spending five years at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a finance and corporate strategy specialist, Israel Cooper worked as a consultant for Accenture and Silverstone Global. Experienced in economic modeling, financial analysis and forecasting, Israel has provided advisory services in landmark mergers and acquisitions, capital raisings, corporate treasury activities, IP commercialisation, brand leveraging, global distribution, and has completed a number of public and private sector reports for government entities.

Massive Insight Beta Brings Film Quality Realism to Engineers, Architects & Researchers

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award winning animation system, today announced the introduction of Massive InsightTM and issued a call for entries for an exclusive beta testing program. Massive Insight utilizes AI-driven agents that use natural senses such as vision and hearing to accurately simulate real-world behavior, and can be used to simulate any object or creature moving on earth – from pedestrian, planes, trains and automobiles to insects and microbes.

“Our film and television customers have been producing realistic simulations of everything from human crowds to race cars for years. We are pleased to now make our technology available to architects, planners, civil engineers and research scientists to help manage our increasingly complex world,” said Diane Holland, CEO of Massive Software. “Massive’s flexibility provides for a huge range of behaviors -- urban traffic patterns, office evacuations, animal migrations –- more accurately than ever before. We are looking for a selection of beta users to best inform our ongoing development.