I just got done reading an article in Popular Science (Dec ''02) about the program called Massive that''s being developed for the last two Lord of the Rings movies. The program takes a character and assigns it an "electronic brain" which is probably their laymans term for a neural network. The newtwork has thousands of nodes for possible action they connect using a GUI app designed to map out the character''s personality. Then they plop the characters into a scene and let them go at it. The program uses fuzzy logic for undeterminable effects. They did this with a few different characters to find the ones with the correct set of personalities that performed the way they wanted and then they took those 15 or so and replicated them into 50,000 - taking each and adding random personality tweaks to individualize them. The scenes these entities are in can actually take hours or even a day or two to play out in full, and the programmers never really know what''s going to happen, although recent versions have let them tweak properties in real-time to better control the flow of battle. The article also states that in the huge battle scene in the third installment Return of the King (on the plains of Gondor) they''re going to jack the number up to 100,000. That''s amazing. Anyways I was just wondering if anyone else has heard of this tech and what they think of it. It''s definetly something too processor-intensive for games (currently) but from a plain AI point of view it''s really cool that they''re finally starting to incorporate this stuff into digital film characters. _________________________________________________________________ Drew Sikora A.K.A. Gaiiden ICQ #: 70449988 AOLIM: DarkPylat Blade Edge Software Staff Member, GDNet Public Relations, Game Institute 3-time Contributing author, Game Design Methods , Charles River Media Online column - Design Corner at Pixelate Unnoficial IGDA chat! [polaris.starchat.net -> #igda] NJ IGDA Chapter - NJ developers unite!! [Chapter Home | Chapter Forum] "Real programmers don''t work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it''s because they were up all night." -Anon. "It''s not the size of the source that matters, it''s how you use it" - Self

Yeah I heard of it. There''s a documentary about it on the LOTR DVD. IMO it''s simply amazing

/MindWipe

Its not THAT amazing. i mean it is pretty easy to imagine how it would be implemented. But I do think it is pretty cool. Too bad we cant process like that in real time.

I read that article as well, that was cool.
I''d like to see a home version.
Something that on the continuum between video games and movies is closer to the movies.
Digital Battle Creator v1.0

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The program takes a character and assigns it an "electronic brain" which is probably their laymans term for a neural network.

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From the description, it didn''t seem like a neural network.

Yeah, I doubt Neural networks would be the first choice.
I heard about it, well, since the filming started to begin, really. IMHO, I think it''s just what you would get from flocking behaviour technique but on amphetamines
I mean, just look at flocking bahviours, and the simplicity of the basic rules. Now imagine what it would look like with added depth of rules, better graphics, and the horsepower that a special effects studio can summon...
*drool*

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

Find the article here.

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Original post by Gaiiden
They did this with a few different characters to find the ones with the correct set of personalities that performed the way they wanted and then they took those 15 or so and replicated them into 50,000 -


Could be genetic algorithms then? You make changes and wait and see which ones behave as desired...

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