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 year

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.

It

was 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

made 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 their visual effects in

2014! We wonder what Weta

Digital has up their sleeve for

2015…..