Academy Award winning 3D Animation Software for AI-Driven Characters Now Includes Enhanced Agent Fields, New Terrain Nodes and More

Auckland, New Zealand (February 17, 2010) - Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award®-winning 3D animation software for AI-driven characters, has released Massive 4.0. The latest release includes support for popular V-Ray rendering, new terrain nodes, enhanced brain nodes and agent fields, and many more features and improvements.

Terrain nodes

Massive allows artists to create and direct anything from CG humanoids to birds, animals, cars and more to deliver realistic and emotive virtual performances. Massive "agents" are 3D characters that use sight, sound and touch to interpret and react autonomously to the world around them. Massive incorporates procedural animation and AI, and is used by professionals in animation, visual effects and design visualization.

V-Ray

"Massive 4.0 is a major release that brings both creative and pipeline flexibility to artists and studios, and fulfills a number of enhancement requests from the Massive community," said Massive Founder and CTO Stephen Regelous. "We've added Terrain nodes, V-Ray support, Python GUI support, Hair/Fur clumping, deep shadow maps, better placement for stadiums, and many other improvements."

V-Ray output

Feature Highlights in Massive 4.0:

• Terrain Nodes - Use an unlimited number of .obj files for terrain geometry; not only for the ground on which Agents walk, but also for walls of buildings, render-only geometry, collision-only geometry and other special purposes.
• V-Ray Rendering - Supports this popular renderer, ideal for scenes requiring highly realistic lighting, in the same highly-efficient manner as RenderMan, 3Delight, Air and Mental Ray. Massive generates .vrscene files for the main render files, and for the terrain and agent archive files. It also automatically generates shader dialog parameters for V-Ray material plug-ins and V-Ray materials, giving users complete freedom to assign any available default or custom plug-ins and materials.
• Enhanced Agent Fields and Variables - It is now possible to vary each Agent's response to Agent Fields individually using scale and offset parameters such as distance or color. A new plus button in the variables tab makes it easier and more convenient to handle large numbers of Agent/Group variables.
• Place Tools - Stadium placement is even easier with the addition of rows and columns to the polygon generator, which allow for locators to be placed in rows and columns in any shape. The polygon generator also offers a handy stagger parameter, which can be used to offset rows laterally.
• Hair and Fur Enhancements - Use Deep Shadow Maps to realistically render longer hair and fur and generate high quality self-shadowing; and Hair/Fur Clumping to generate messy, lumpy, or even wet hair or fur.
• Brain Node Improvements - Control delay time and filter width in the output node with other nodes in the brain, using new options to select between "latch," "delay," and "filter" as destinations for alternative inputs. To simplify multiple inputs to an input node, a new feature adds values together.

Self-shadowing	Deep Shadow Map

For more comprehensive Massive 4.0 features and product information, please visit http://www.massivesoftware.com.

Pricing and Availability Massive 4.0 is now available for Windows and Linux. Massive Jet 4.0, delivering out-of-the-box functionality, is available for $5,999 USD per license. For ultimate customization, flexibility and the ability to create and edit agents, Massive 4.0 is priced at $17,999 USD per license.

About Massive
Academy Award-winning Massive is the revolutionary 3D animation system that incorporates procedural animation and artificial intelligence. Massive is used by animation and visual effects artists to explore the new world of creative opportunities that AI-enabled characters make possible. Agents are 3D characters that have a fuzzy logic AI "brain" and the natural senses of sight, sound and touch which enables them to interpret and react autonomously to the world around them. Agents can be just about any character you can imagine from humanoids, birds, animals and insects to inanimate objects such as cars. The intuitive interface of Massive allows artists to interactively control and direct agents providing highly realistic, directable and emotive performances.

About Massive Software
Massive Software is the leading creator of artificial intelligence-based 3D animation systems. Massive was founded when Stephen Regelous programmed a unique piece of software for director Peter Jackson to make creation of complicated visual effects scenes involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters a practical reality. Regelous garnered 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, with customers including Pixar, The Mill, Centro Digital, Digital Domain, Moving Picture Company, Rhythm & Hues and other leading digital production and effects studios. For more information, please contact Massive North America (+1 310-837-7878), New Zealand (+64 9-3030-030), Europe (+44 20 7096 1605) or visit http://www.massivesoftware.com.

###

Massive Software, Massive Prime, and Massive Jet are trademarks of Massive, Ltd. Academy Award is a trade or servicemark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.