Auckland, New Zealand - Massive Software, developer of 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.
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.
“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,” says 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.”
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 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.
Massive 4.0 is now available for Windows and Linux. Massive Jet 4.0, offering out-of-the-box functionality, is available for $5999 per license. For ultimate customization, flexibility, and the ability to create and edit agents, Massive 4.0 is priced at $17,999 per license.