Massive Software Launches Massive Jet™

Massive Announces New Product Optimized for Speed, Economy and Easy Creation of Digital Crowds and Stunts

Monday 1 August 2005

Massive Software announced today Massive Jet™, a new autonomous agent 3D animation application that enables the creation of large–scale, believable digital crowd shots "out of the box" with high quality and a low learning curve. A full–functioning package priced under $6K USD, Massive Jet™ leverages the company's Academy Award–winning artificial life–based technology, pre–built Ready–to–Run Agent™ library and GPU–accelerated rendering support to allow animators and artists at any facility to quickly and easily produce highly realistic Massive scenes.

"We wanted to build a product everyone can use," said Stephen Regelous, Founder and Product Manager, Massive Software. "Massive Jet™ offers a low learning curve and the power to produce Massive crowds at a cost within reach of all animation professionals. Using a single license of Massive Jet™ and agents from our Ready–to–Run Agent™ Library, you can easily fill a stadium, send a thousand people down the block, or stage a huge medieval battle."

Ready to Run

Turning around and fine–tuning finished scenes in either Massive product is now faster and easier. With GPU–accelerated rendering recently launched for the Massive product line, huge–scale shots can be rendered 30 times faster at film quality without additional software. Massive Jet™ customers can use desktop–based OpenGL solutions, currently including NVIDIA's Quadro FX 3000 or higher, for a cost–effective crowd–creation pipeline from start to finish.

Full Featured

Massive Jet™ includes the same world–leading artificial life–based responsive agent technology in the company's original premier product, Massive 2.0. The full–featured Massive Jet™ includes Smart Stunts™ for responsive digital stunt moves, Massive's powerful Cloth tools, rigid body dynamics, terrain adaptation and high–level controls to create the most life–like animations. As in Massive 2.0, users can generate unlimited numbers of characters with virtually limitless variation and a wide range of human and non–human–specific skeletons – whether birds, insects, aliens, cars or fantasy creatures.

Massive 2.0, currently shipping, continues to bring top–end facilities the ability to create custom agents and edit their response systems ("brains"), motion trees, Smart Stunts, cloth simulations and dynamics from the ground up for highly customized agents and motion in an artist–friendly node–based UI.

Pricing And Availability

Massive Jet™ is expected to be available in Q4 2005 for $5,990 USD per license. Massive 2.0 is available now, with licenses priced at $18,000 USD.

Massive Jet™ and Massive 2.0 both run on Red Hat 7.3, 9.0, Fedora Core 2. For optimum performance, a 2–3 GHz Pentium Processor, 1–2 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA Quadro Graphics Card are recommended. Please see www.massivesoftware.com for more details.

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 developer of artificial intelligence–based 3D animation systems, and the only proven commercial system for feature film. 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.

Now a standalone, commercially available product, Massive is used by leading digital production and effects studios including Weta Digital, The Mill, Animal Logic, Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain. In 2004, Massive was honored with a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and with a Technical Innovation Award at the 3D Awards in Copenhagen

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.

Massive Software and Smart Stunts™ are trademarks of Massive, Ltd. Academy Award and Academy Awards are trade or servicemarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.