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Most of the tribute goes to the young code wizard Steven Regelous, who realized Jackson’s vision of creating armies and began his years of R&D that resulted into something beyond anything ever seen before on film, or any other media for that matter. As other developers begin to realize the apparent trend continuing to grow for large scale battles or crowd scenes as seen in upcoming films such as Troy, games such as War Craft 3 or even TV commercials (PlayStation TVC), we can expect to see many more advancements to be made within Massive itself, Discreet’s Character Studio and many other respective crowd control applications making their way into the market share.

So, as our digital counterparts increase their AI prowess, modeling techniques within current 3D applications are also keeping pace. Let’s take a look.

Last year, AMD introduced the Athlon™ 64 FX Processor. © 2004 Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Created for Artists by Artists
The modeling, or for a better term today “sculpting,” paradigm has begun to shift as well. Software such as Pixologic’s ZBrush, has revolutionalized the creative workflow in the recent year and will continue to do so this year and beyond. Although some 3D sculptors may believe not much more can be done in the advancement of modeling tools with respects to techniques and efficiency, they will be in for quite a surprise when handling the new comer ZBrush. What is the difference you ask? For example, sculpting your model as apposed to creating it from the traditional cube.

What makes ZBrush unique is the sense of actually pushing and pulling real clay. ZBrush gives the artist the tools to not only now break away from the somewhat “inorganic” feel of creating characters, but also gives them the tools to create those imperfections in a mesh as easy as pinching clay, which makes them more lifelike and “real.” Just as in life, all software does, however, have its shortcomings, and with ZBrush there’s no exception, due to the very intimidating and somewhat non-intuitive approach to ZBrush’s UI. Many an artist has thought this application to be a “novelty” for sometime, as a result not peaking their curiosity enough to give it a fair shake, but rest assured, with the help of some of the most formidable production houses in the industry such as Weta Digital already utilizing ZBrush in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pixologic has promised that many exciting features and changes are to come with the pending release of ZBrush 2.0.