VFX Facilities Create Mayhem with Massive for X-Men: The Last Stand

Framestore CFC and WETA Digital Leverage Massive to Address Complex Visual Effects Challenges in Film

Wednesday 7 June 2006

Massive Software announced that its Academy Award–winning artificial life–based 3D animation system has been used by visual effects companies Framestore CFC and WETA Digital for the new X–Men movie X–Men: The Last Stand (Twentieth Century Fox). With Massive, visual effects studios can animate anywhere from a few to a few hundred thousand realistically responding digital characters, helping artists and animators tackle ever more ambitious effects challenges and scenes, such as those seen in X3.

Both Framestore CFC and WETA Digital used Massive to craft scenes of mayhem in the Brett Ratner–directed movie, which sees war breaking out after a cure for mutant genes is found.

"We were looking for an off–the–shelf solution we could drop into our pipeline," said Craig Lyn, Visual Effects Supervisor, Framestore CFC. "Our Golden Gate crowd scenes called for numerous characters and we weren’t planning on doing a motion capture session. Massive provided a good set of pre–built agents with motion capture actions and the ability to have them respond in their own ways to their surroundings."

"We’ve adopted Massive for our latest set of projects," added Christophe Meslin, Head of Systems Support, Framestore CFC. "It has some great crowd–simulation features, and we are looking forward to making it our primary solution in this area."

WETA Digital, who first pioneered the use of Massive for epic–level film effects and has forwarded that innovation with projects such as King Kong, again took advantage of the flexibility and speed of Massive for about 20 shots in X–Men: The Last Stand.

"One of the reasons Fox came to WETA Digital was for our ability to quickly populate the Alcatraz set, which is where some of the central action in this movie takes place." We were able to not only use Massive for crowds of people, but also for populating cars on the Golden Gate Bridge," commented Eric Saindon, Visual Effects Supervisor, WETA Digital.

Massive products Massive Prime, Massive Jet and Massive Ready–to–Run Agents help filmmakers and VFX artists expand the realms of possibility by allowing scenes and stunts to be achieved with autonomously responding virtual characters. With recent uses on motion pictures from Poseidon and The Promise to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and King Kong, Massive has become a must–have toolset as the industry pushes the bounds of epic–level productions and creative ideas.

For more about Massive Prime™, Massive Jet™, Ready–to–Run Agents™ and applications for Massive in feature film please visit www.massivesoftware.com.

About Massive Software

Springing into existence to help artists solve real–world production needs on The Lord of the Rings films, Massive Software is the leading creator of artificial intelligence–based 3D animation systems. Massive was founded when Stephen Regelous programmed a unique piece of software for director Peter Jackson to make creation of complicated visual effects scenes involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters a practical reality. Massive garnered a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Today, Massive Software develops a family of standalone, commercially available products, with customers including The Mill, Centro Digital, Digital Domain, Framestore CFC, Rhythm & Hues and other leading digital production and effects studios.

For more information, please contact Massive North America (+1 310 837 7878), New Zealand (+64 9 3030 030), Europe (+44 20 7096 1605) or visit www.massivesoftware.com.