Thread: Massive - Agent based crowd control AI

  1. #1
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Massive - Agent based crowd control AI

    It is just amazing what this software can do. http://www.massivesoftware.com/what_massive.html

    I first heard of it in the Special (Extended) Edition DVDs for Lord of the Rings. The software was actually built for those movies. Setting aside the movie and animation purpose, what stands out is how the AI operates.

    There's no description of mine that could synthetise it better than these two paragraphs:

    Quote Originally Posted by from their website
    The reactions of the characters determine what they do and how they do it. Their reactions can even simulate emotive qualities such as bravery, weariness, or joy. The agent reactions can control key-framed or motion captured animation clips called actions.
    Characters that perform on their own in this way are referred to as agents. Massive is a system for designing and running such agents. When scaled up into the hundreds - or hundreds of thousands - the interaction within the crowd that emerges from these individuals is highly realistic.
    Even more amazing is the application for the game industry. Do please read about Massive Live. Once you set up an agent you can "play" against it with your joystick or gamepad. Everything from there on is completely calculated by the AI. You opponent can run and flee, get angry, scared, fight harder or fight for his life.

    I understand this is a commercial application. But It's absolutely incredible the power of this AI. Just so that you have an idea, the two major battles in LotR (Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields) where totally rendered with Massive on those long distance shots you see. Pelennor Fields had 350,000 agents on some of the shots.

    I just wished to share this for those of you who could possibly not know about about it.

    EDIT: Do check their showcase for amazing examples ofwhat can be done. Again abstract yourself from the rendering. What is amazing in this product is definitely the AI. What you are looking at is hundreds, thousands and tens of thousand individual agents each with it's own AI brain reacting nder crowd situations.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 08-12-2006 at 04:07 PM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

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    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    The limit on machine specs is suspect. Why only Quadro FX for video card?

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    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    I suspect most of the rendering should be done outside Massive. The integration with Maya is very strong according with their words.

    However, there's this paragraph from their FAQ for those chosing to render from Massive

    Massive can do software rendering through RenderMan renderers or high-quality hardware rendering directly from Massive. The RenderMan renderers supported at the moment are PRMan, 3Delight, and Air. Mental Ray support should be available soon.
    I suspect, depending on the scene, a Quadro is no longer a good idea. Well... in fact the solution will be some rendering farm.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

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    $17,999 USD

    No AI program is worth that...

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    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    Are you kidding? Given the costs of commercial licenses for this stuff these days, that's a steal.
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
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    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

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