Features
Shared Features (Massive Prime™, Massive Jet™ and Massive for Maya™) | Features Specific to Massive Prime™ |
Features Specific to Massive for Massive for Maya™ |
Body Editor | Brain Editor | Post-simulation motion editing |
The Body Editor provides the workflow to build and customize skeletons, geometry, cloth, and materials. It enables the automated variation of agent proportions (skeleton) and appearance (geometry, shaders, and texture maps). | The intuitive node-based Brain Editor interface allows artists to interactively create AI=enabled agents without any programming. The AI toolset gives artists the freedom to build custom AI logic for the specific behavior they want to simulate. | When using the Maya graph editor, any changes made to a simulation automatically feed back to the Massive agents. These adjustments to agents will appear in the render, while the user sees an editable Maya character in the viewport. |
Scene Editor | Motion Tree Editor | Directable Characters |
The Scene Editor provides the workflow to control and direct cameras, terrain and agents. Tools are provided for both general and specific control and direction of agents. Crowds in a stadium can easily be made to clap and cheer at the right time with the general agent controls. You can also control the parameters of individual agent placement and behavior. | The Motion Tree is used to design the agent's motion, which then becomes an integral part of the agent. The output from the Motion Tree can then be used as a take list for the mocap session. This Motion Tree workflow, along with the integrated Action Editor, allows key-framed or motion-captured animation clips to be actions linked to the brain. | Create characters using a handful of base cycles, takes and expressions that can handle such tasks as keeping alive, responding to the the focus of a shot, responding to simple direction, or simply walking along a path. This reduces the amount of work required to fill out a scene with characters which are not currently the focus of the shot. |
Natural Senses | Action Editor | |
Massive is based on artificial life technology. Massive characters use a patented vision process, and a sense of hearing and touch that allows them to respond naturally to their environment. | A motion editing program for importing motion. Cross fade looping editor is a convenient way of creating seamless loops. Prepare clips for Massive. Quality of motion. Its integrated motion editing built into Massive so you don't need to use another program import and can edit it in context. | |
Fuzzy Logic for Subtlety | Smart Stunts™ | |
Massive animators use fuzzy logic to design their characters' responses. Instead of a value being black or white, it can be a shade of grey or 'fuzzy' - giving the character more natural responses than the on/off robotic results of binary logic. | Massive's digital stunts are controlled by dynamics that pull from real motion capture data. Filmmakers can direct the motions and reactions they want with real stunt actors and then import these actions into a Massive agent to give direction and character to the agent's performance. | |
AI for Film Quality | Cloth Editor | |
Massive uses an approach to AI which makes the action in the shot the top priority. This distinguishes it from other crowd software using AI originally designed for games, which has as its priority the ability to generate animation in real time. | Massive cloth can be created using arbitrary geometry, and can be used to generate flowing robes, cloaks, flags and much more. The thickness, flexibility and elasticity of the cloth are controlled intuitively. | |
Dynamic Hair and Fur | Compatibility | |
Use texture maps to control all hair parameters. Dynamic guide hairs can be interpolated in a render taking advantage of various details of implementation of the hair shader for either long or short hair. | Import Maya skeletons, Maya animation, Acclaim skeletons and motion files, BVH motion files. | |
Lanes | API and Scripting | |
Lay down directional lanes in terrain and set up agents to follow lanes with this new automated feature. Designed to simplify traffic simulations with multiple layers, this feature is ideal for animating cars and streets, boats in a harbor or even groups of people in a building. | The Massive Application Programmer's Interface (API) allows the development of C/C++ plug-ins. Python and TCL scripts can be executed either in the Massive text port or from an agent's brain. | |
Subdivision Surfaces | ||
Interactive viewing of subdivision surfaces on hundreds or thousands of agents is now available in the viewport via a specially developed and highly optimized level of detail algorithm. This feature enables users to build more high fidelity agents with a simplified pipeline. | ||
Simulation Passes | ||
Built-in simulation passes allow the user to set up multiple layers of simulation for such things as performance, dynamics, hair and cloth more quickly and efficiently. This feature saves time, improves workflow and allows for better collaboration between artists. | ||
Improved Dynamics | ||
It's now possible for agents to seamlessly transition back from dynamics into performing motion captured or keyframed actions. This means that an agent could be violently knocked down to the ground with all the realism of a 'smart stunts' dynamic performance, and then get back up to continue the fight. | ||
FBX Support | ||
Easily import and export skeletal data in and out of Massive when using animation packages ranging from Autodesk Maya and Maxon Cinema 4D to Autodesk 3ds Max much more quickly and easily than before. | ||
Directability | ||
Artists can keyframe attributes of agents over time to control activities like cheering, clapping, running, standing, or talking - and whether they are excited, sad, tired, aggressive or even muddy. Artists can use flow fields or paint on the terrain to affect agent behaviour. | ||
Intuitive Editing | ||
Intuitive Editing of placement, 3D paint, shaders, agent variation. | ||
Skinning | ||
Skinning is historically a laborious, time intensive process. Massive's skinning process is revolutionary in its speed and ease of use. Skin weights can also be imported from other packages. | ||
Scalability | ||
Massive was designed specifically to handle hundreds of thousands of photorealistic characters. Massive does not require the use of other host animation software. It sends data straight to the renderer, avoiding a bottleneck common to other crowd software. | ||
Compatibility | ||
Massive is compatible with industry standard skeleton, motion and geometry formats. At the time of this printing we support the following: Import: Maya camera, Maya lights, Wavefront OBJ geometry Export: Maya particle cache for previewing in Maya |
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Rigid Body Dynamics | ||
Massive uses Rigid Body Dynamics, a physics-based approach to facilitating realistic stunt motion such as falling, animation of accessories, and projectiles. | ||
Terrain Adaptation | ||
Agents are able to adapt their gait to arbitrary terrain. This process is determined by the animator when the agents are created, rather than by built-in constraints, allowing for much more realistic and character specific motion. | ||
Software Rendering | ||
Massive's optimized RenderMan pipeline avoids writing huge amounts of data to disk and enables highly efficient rendering of large Massive scenes with Pixar's RenderMan, Air, 3Delight, Mental Ray, V-Ray and Arnold. |