Behind the Scenes -LOTR
 

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but I found a series a videos on the making of the two big battle scenes in 1 and 2. They talk a lot about Massive, the program they used to make the 80,000 person armies, and about compositing the final shot.

Behind the Scenes - LOTR

Also they mentioned this really cool scanner that they used to scan the clay model to turn them into digital geometry.

Oh this is great MKess007. That scanner is actually called a 3d scanner, there is also a 3d printer too! The only places that actually have them though are hospitals. But techncally you could model something on your computer and print out a plastic (exact) model of it. Its used for taking pictures of the spine on serious surgeries, so they can practice before they go in. Imagine that hey, you want to scan your exact head onto your computer and you could! hahaha.

Today I was checking out E-bay for one of those 3D scanners and found 3! Of Course, the lowest was $3,000 but hey! There is the other one used by NASA, GM, and Ford that cost $50,000. It is like a giant arm with a scanner at the end.

Check it out here

Here is a vid of Milton Ngan's presentation (from WETA) at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention... He goes over a lot of technical behind the scenes stuff from the first LOTR movie.

Some sweet shots of the cave troll, Massive, motion capture...
125MB, 42 mins.

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs...ew/e_sess/3118