Extreme power binds FIRE GL X1 and The Lord of the Rings. (Advertisement).(Massive Software, ATI's graphics board)

The latest workstation release from ATI, FIRE GL X1, provides new levels of real-time cinematic rendering and animation for digital content creators.

Rendering out a digital army isn't what it used to be. Visual effects artists have been creating breathtaking imagery for so long that audiences have come to expect higher levels of realism with each successive blockbuster. Digital artists have been creating breathtaking effects for so long, that film audiences have come to expect higher levels of realism with each successive blockbuster. So when Director Peter Jackson prepared to undertake The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he knew that the films' vast armies had to do more than mill around and casually avoid each other; Jackson required a solution that would create and authentically manage complex crowds, and his challenge was answered by Massive Software.

Massive provides artificial intelligence aim behavioral roles to thousands of digital characters at one given time. At Siggraph 2002, their work on The Lord of the Rings was displayed in astonishing fashion: rendered in real-time, courtesy of ATI's FIRE GL technology. This demonstration opened a door to a world of cinematic rendering and animation with unequalled stability and performance, qualities are all represented by the extreme power of the FIRE GL X1. With its revolutionary 128-bit full floating point architecture, FIRE GL X1's release is poised to set a new standard of how artists and developers interact with their work.

Real Power, Real-Time

"Seeing a computer generated film sequence rendered in real-time is a huge benefit for artists," stated Stephen Regelous, Massive's Chief Technology Officer and President. As created by Massive, `agents' are digital characters that respond to what they see, hear and touch. Agent bodies act like traditional CG animation skeletons except they are made from solid primitives like spheres and tubes, making dynamics and collisions easier to operate. The highly evolved decision making of Massive's agents will play an even larger role in The Two Towers, the next film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Executive producer Mark Ordesky has commented, "people (ask) me the difference between film one and film two. In a nutshell? Bigger." Of the films' estimated 600 effects shots, many are used to create the battle of Helm's Deep. This sequence relies on Massive's agents to simulate combat between an army of men and elves against 10,000 Uruk-hai, or Uber-Orcs. As the centerpiece of The Two Towers, this battle reflects the visual expectations of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Massive's ability to make it possible. Ordesky's expectations are mirrored in graphics hardware by the release of FIRE GL X1, and the extreme power created by ATI to enable the pursuit of cinematic realism.

"We've taken a great leap forward to address the needs of digital content creators. With the strength of Massive software and the power of ATI's engine, visual computing enters a new era of functionality and control," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President of Marketing & General Manager, Desktop Marketing, ATI Technologies Inc. Anticipating the need to interact with fully rendered models in leading digital content creation software FIRE GL X1 was designed around 256MB of DDR memory, full support for the AGP 8X standard ...