Massive Software announced the upcoming release of v8.0 of its crowd simulation software, which brings the ability to simulate and display 20,000 agents in real-time and streamlines the process of creating custom agent brains thanks to a new Parts feature.
Massive for 3DS Max has also been announced, which is a complete plugin implementation of the crowd simulation software for 3DS Max. The plugin will allow Max users to easily create, simulate and render scenes of many thousands of characters and see the Massive agents in the scene just like any other 3DS Max object. V-Ray rendering is fully integrated, and the plugin is expected to be released “very soon”, along with Massive 8.0.
New features in Massive 8.0 include:
- Ability to run real-time simulations containing 20,000+ agents at 24fps on a single PC – these are not pre-recorded simulations, and they do not use particles. An NVidia Quadro K6000 or Titan X graphics card is required to make it possible to render 20,000 agents at 24fps with sufficient detail. Now previz crowd shots can be easily created in real-time and on-set CG elements can include full, high-quality crowd elements that are truly indicative of the end result.
- New Parts feature – allows artists to rapidly assemble agent brains by simply dropping in a few pre-made parts. This features allows for the creation of libraries of agent parts that can be reused and shared across multiple agents, and can be updated and maintained independently of the agents. This is greatly beneficial to both beginner and more experienced artists working with asset management systems in large studios.
- Edit agents inside Maya – we’ve added the Massive editor window to Massive for Maya 8.0, which allows for editing every aspect of agent bodies. Change any piece of geometry or texture map, adjust shader parameters, adjust rigid body dynamics settings, and add variation. This is basically the same as a full Massive Jet license, all in the familiar environment of Maya, and still only $3500.
- Polygon placement – often it’s advantageous to use reference geometry for agent placement in the scene. The “geometry generator” placement primitive has been improved to allow for simple and powerful per-polygon agent placement. With Massive 8.0 a stadium shot of 100,000 agents can be accurately set up in seconds.
- Generator gaps – a much requested feature is the ability to insert gaps into agent placement. So now random gaps can be introduced using a simple slider.
- Agents as terrain – agents now have the ability to walk over other agents, as if they were terrain. This is particularly useful when there are a lot of dead bodies in the scene. Another potential use would be insects crawling over each other.
- Parent to terrain / Lanes parented to terrain – when the terrain model is animated in multiple pieces it can be challenging to adapt agent performances to the wildly varying landscape. Massive 8.0 brings the ability to parent agents to individual pieces of terrain, providing much broader scope for compelling performances in situations in which the terrain model is animated. Parenting of lanes to terrain has also been added, for guiding agents around on the surface of the animated terrain.
- Terrain file interpolation – when using sequences of geometry files as terrain, dynamics can become unstable. Massive 8.0 solves this by interpolating between geometry files on every step of the dynamics simulation, resulting in much more stable rigid body dynamics.
- RenderMan RIS – completely rewritten renderer integration for PRMan 19 and onwards, taking full advantage of the new RIS rendering technology.
Visit Massive Software’s website for more.
Sorry but if its going to be the same price as Massive for Maya 3500$ i dont think ill be picking this up
It’s quite cheap! If you’re doing the type of shots that’d need massive, you’re likely working on quite high budget shots and it’ll cover the cost of the software easily enough – I’d say they probably do rentals too.
I agree, massive is not oriented towards small and medium business, this is more for large studios, or at least it feels that way, so for large studios with massive budgets this is a good price.
I, as a small studio runner, I won’t be acquiring this at any time, it’s pretty high price for me, maybe their rental option could be good if it exists, the good thing is that they don’t do RENTAL ONLY, and they let their customers decide what type of license they want, unlike Autodesk or Cebas that does not want customers but slaves…
So the most likely chain of events based on fluids will be:
1) all development stops on Populate because this tool is available and better
2) Autodesk buys it out
3) pieces of this or a similar product are integrated into Maya, but never come to Max
Populate and Massive may look same, but, they are different.
Populate is a synthetic motion generator. It does not require source motion data.
Massive requires source motion data. Either you need make them or you need to buy from them seperately.
@Jim:
Autodesk already bought Kynogon in 2008 ( Kynapse develope, a crowd simulation/Steering middleware ) and stopped calling it Kynapse something arround 2012/2013. A new product called Autodesk Navigation was introduced. It was announced as a completely newly developed product, but developed by the Kynapse team. Since then, Navigate is integrated in Autodesk’s Gameware suite. It was said that some of Kynapse/Navigate tech has found it’s way into Populate, but i can’t see nor imagine much effect of this. Populate is a too limited, closed, black-boxed product to be of much use. Don’t know what’s their plan for this in the future
Massive on the other hand is some more prominent history. AFAIK it has it’s roots in the need for crowd sim for the Lord of the rings trilogy arround 2000.
But i really don’t think that Autodesk has enough interest or see a big enough market to buy out massive. And of course there has to be a seller to be able to buy something…
It all depends on how many people wants to keep paying Autodesk for it’s software with their non-sense pricing, the acquisition power of autodesk is given by us, users, so it’s oyur responsability to make them fail in their renting adventure and bring back permanent licenses, maybe coexisting with renting licenses, but we have to make them realize that only renting is bad for users.
In the end a user in renting is going to pay three times more than before per year!
Back when they announced they are no longer working on a Max integration I contacted them to know the answer, they told me the reason is that Max now has it’s own crowd simulation tool(it was around the time that Populate was being introduced for Max), I honestly found their mindset a bit odd, either they knew things about the then-future of Populate that we didn’t, or they really had no idea what Populate was about, because to me Populate(while being technically a crowd sim tool) was way too closed/limited to be ever compared to Massive(a completely open Crown/AI simulation tool).
Whatever the reason was back then I’m really glad that they have decided to come back to Max, though I’m really curious to know how complete of an integration we are talking about here, will we get all the power of Massive in Max or will it be limited to only limited crowd behaviors, if this is truly a complete and unrestricted integration then this can have a lot of direct and indirect implications for the future, can’t wait for some video demonstrations.
Populate could be a great archviz/vfx tool…could be if max dev team put a bit of love in it.
Massive for max is welcome surely for Pixomondo, Scanline etc.