The remarkable visual effects in The Hobbit: The

Battle of the Five Armies

Though the movie wasn’t nominated for Oscars, it contains some of the most stunning visual effects the world has

seen in the 2014.Below is a list of some of the effects in the movie that we believe deserves a standing ovation and a mention of the technology that went into the creation

of those effects.

Massive and impressive

environments

Weta Digital used the same crowd simulation technology, Massive,

used in LOTR to create the stunning battle that marks the ending of The

Hobbit trilogy.

The army manager production tool was introduced in the production of this movie. It allowed for the

visualization of the battle scenes beforehand guiding the filming of the scenes. This bridged the gap in real time between the previous and final shots

The technology rightly named as Massive, a animation and post

production tool, was then used to obtain the final shots of the visualized

battle scenes. Itwas created in New

Zealand

This film also saw the use of the Manuka

renderer previously used in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. It was used in the creation of the fluid destruction sequences

and the digital character work that Weta Digital is

best known for.

The most stunning of the sequences in the

movie however was the lake town attack by

Smaug that was created in a closed

volume created specifically for this

sequence.The following slides explain the correlation and the

complicated calculations that went into the creation of

the sequence.

Smaug’s wings drive the air simulations in

the closed volume space created.

Airflow fluid simulations driven by the air

simulations in turn drive the fire simulations.

The fire simulation in turn drives the detailed building destruction with the rigid

body simulation.

The rigid body simulations of the building destruction interacts with the airflow simulation causing the smoke and steam to rise. This is seen around the

wings of the dragon.

All this happens while Smaug is breathing fire.

Source: www.wired.com

That was 2014! We wonder what Weta Digital has up their sleeve for 2015…..