Stephen Regelous

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Stephen Regelous is a computer graphics software engineer from New Zealand. He is best known as the creator of the Massive simulation system that generated the battle scenes of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings . In 2004, Regelous received an Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement. [1] He is the founder of the company Massive Software.

Prior to working on Lord of the Rings, Regelous had worked as a Technical Director on Jackson's earlier movie, The Frighteners . In 1996, Jackson asked Regelous to work on The Fellowship of the Ring , the first movie in the LOTR trilogy. [2] Regelous was asked by Jackson to come up with a program that could create the huge battle scenes in the trilogy. Regelous wrote the software over several years and it was used in all three Lord of the Rings movies. [3] The 'revolutionary' new software generated individual 'agents' which, at the time, were the closest any program had come to artificial intelligence in digital characters. [4]

In 2005, Regelous opened an office in Bangkok. [5]

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References

  1. http://www.encoremagazine.com.au/articles/62/0C02BB62.aspx%5B%5D
  2. Massive Attack, Popular Science Magazine, Vol.261. No. 6, Dec 2002, p. 38.Retrieved 8 November 2009
  3. Digital Actors in Rings Can Think by Courtney Macavinta, Wired Magazine, 13 December 2002. Retrieved 8 November 2009
  4. The Rough Guide to the Lord of the Rings by Rough Guides and Paul Simpson, p.129
  5. Archived 2008-10-14 at the Wayback Machine Series about cartoons, The Nation, 16 November 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2009