(too) smart animation software in LOTR
I was not initially enthusiastic about the Lord of The Rings movies - perhaps I heard too much hype before I saw the first one, but it struck me as being overly long and didn't really grab me. But I just watched the second one on DVD this past weekend, and got *totally* sucked in. Interestingly enough, my colleague Bill Schaefer had the exact opposite experience - so go figure.
At any rate, I'm looking forward to seeing the thrilling conclusion. And here is a story about how the software used to create the final battle scenes was so smart that the Orcs kept running away from the battle. There's a lesson in there somewhere for our foreign policy, I'm sure.
Basically, all the necessary information for decision-making was fed into this network of computers without determining for them whether they would win or lose.
But this attempt to ensure that they acted spontaneously almost sabotaged the the battleground sequences.
"For the first two years, the biggest problem we had was soldiers fleeing the field of battle," Taylor said.
"We could not make their computers stupid enough to not run away."
So some extra computer tinkering was required to ensure that the trilogy's climactic battle worked the way Jackson wanted.
Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this out!
Actually, according to articles that were making the rounds before the release of Two Towers, it wasn't really that the orcs were "too smart" - after all, the Orcs greatly outnumber the forces of humanity.
The problem was that the orcs in the back were too far away from the conflict. They couldn't "see" it, and kept wandering off elsewhere, looking for a fight.
I ought to hunt up the old articles in my free nanoseconds...
Oren, I'm sure you remember Motesqieu's quote: "A rational army would run away."
That's interesting... I like LOTR and I enjoyed your post