By Elina Shatkin, February 11, 2005
Massive Software, developer of the 3D animation system for AI-driven crowd-related effects, announced the use of Massive by Rhythm & Hues for the motion picture "Elektra." Maximizing the software's new built-in Smart Stunts, a team of two at the leading visual effects studio -- Massive Supervisor Dan Smiczek together with Technical Animator Marc Bryant -- applied the software_s unique flexibility for animating large groups of characters or creatures to create a complex scene involving hundreds of CG snakes.
Rhythm & Hues adopted Massive last year to support the company's effects efforts for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," now in production for a December 2005 release
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When a sequence envisioning several hundred snakes writhing on the ground came up in "Elektra," Dan Smiczek quickly realized the broader applicability of Massive and some of its new feature sets for this very different challenge.
The project marks the film industry's first use of Massive Smart Stunts, a technology developed for digital stunts in "The Lord of the Rings," and recently enhanced in the commercial product. In "Elektra," the snakes are animated procedurally inside Massive while also being influenced by gravity, inertia, forces and collisions.
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