Massive Jet Takes Off at SIGGRAPH

Massive Software opened the hangar doors for Massive Jet, the latest variation on its Academy Award-winning 3D animation application that employs autonomous agents for the creation of large-scale digital crowd shots. Expected to launch at retail during the fourth quarter of this year, the new product promises "out of the box" simplicity and high quality, as well as GPU-accelerated rendering support.

"We wanted to build a product everyone can use," says Massive Software founder and product manager Stephen Regelous. "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."

"Visual effects companies creating customized crowd behaviors outside those found in our agent library would still use our original flagship product, Massive 2.0," adds Massive Software CEO Diane Holland. "For whole new groups of clients such as the smaller 3D shops or post houses with limited 3D capability that just need some crowds to comp into a shot, there’s the more economical Massive Jet."

Each Massive Jet agent is pre-built with skeletons, geometry, cloth, rigid body dynamics, textures, shaders, controls and motion-capture actions provided by industry leaders Giant Studios and House of Moves. Categories of Ready-to-Run Agents currently being rolled out include Locomotion Extras (digital background characters that run, walk, stand and sit), Spectator Set (arena crowds), Background Extras (low-key background activities such as milling around in a plaza or mall) and Combat (fight scenes with characters such as the Medieval Swordsman).

Massive Jet will carry a suggested retail price of $5,990 per license. Massive 2.0 is available now, with licenses priced at $18,000. Both releases run on Red Hat 7.3 and 9.0, and Fedora Core 2. More information can be found at www.massivesoftware.com.