Massive at SIGGRAPH 2009

Monday 3 August 2009

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

Friday 3 July 2009

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.

www.fxphd.com
Geoff Tobin on IMDB

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

Thursday 11 June 2009

Frantic Films just finished doing a whole bunch of shots for John Woo’s historical epic Red Cliff.

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

Friday 1 May 2009

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

Friday 17 April 2009

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.

Read more…

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

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award winning animation system, today announced the introduction of Massive Insight™ 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.

Read more…

The Economist profiles Massive‘s move into real world simulation

Friday 6 March 2009

The March 5 2009 print edition of The Economist features a run down of Massive's uses in a wide range of non-entertainment settings. If you can't get your hands on a hard copy then be sure to read about our move beyond film, games and television online here. We’re well known for the many high profile feature films that Massive Prime and Massive Jet have been used on. If you've seen any trailer for a Hollywood action epic in the past five years then you're probably familiar with what our software can do, but the uses of Massive are just as relevant to real life simulation – architectural visualization, engineering simulations, transportation, retail behaviour. These are just some of the exciting new fields that we’re making progress in through partnerships with a number of companies such as ARUP, USC and Drummond Madell. For more info take a look at these links:

News article: The Economist – ‘Model Behaviour’ – March 5th 2009
Massive Website: More information about Massive‘s move from animation into real world simulation