Massive Software Ready for Primetime

Massive Software’s Academy Award-winning 3D animation system has been used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and other major blockbusters, and now the software is making it’s episodic television debut. CBS Digital recently purchased Massive to create digital crowds for a number of primetime productions.

CBS Digital has been using Massive on The Twelfth Man, a pilot being

produced for FOX Television. The software’s autonomous agent capabilities are being employed to efficiently fill large stadiums with realistic, AI-enabled characters for the basketball-themed show. Other projects CBS Digital plans to use Massive on include The Pope and Cat7.

“Everyone wants full-on feature film-level effects for TV, and with tools

like Massive, you can now do huge-scale effects with a high degree of

realism, a small team of artists and rapid turnaround,” says CBS Digital founder and director of VFX Craig Weiss. “Massive is a perfect piece of software for us.”

The Twelfth Man follows the life of a basketball player as he bounces

between pro teams. When scenes called for legions of cheering fans, CBS Digital used Massive’s Ready-to-Run Stadium Agent to incorporate hundreds of individual digital characters that stand up, cheer and eat popcorn automatically in the scene.

“Massive characters act autonomously, with a ‘brain’ that allows them to

react in ways that mirror real life,” comments Diane Holland, CEO of Massive

Software. “Using a Ready-to-Run Massive Agent like our Stadium Agent, a

single animator can quite easily populate a scene with characters that

respond realistically. As it did for feature films and TV commercials,

Massive is ushering in the ability to develop and realize effects for

primetime television programs and mini-series that were not possible

before.”

Designed by programmer Stephen Regelous specifically to fill Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films with thousands of digital extras, Massive received 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 used by leading digital production and effects studios. For information on Massive Prime, Massive Jet, Ready-to-Run Agents and Massive in television, film and commercials, go to www.massivesoftware.com.