Synactors in films

The first true synactor performances in motion-picture film were in crowd scenes in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). The AI performances were driven by Weta Digital's Massive software. Massive (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) is used to generate crowd-related special effects for film and television: thousands of agents all acting as individuals and responding to each other and to their environment by live-action blending of pre-recorded animation clips. Massive is used also in TV and games to create CG humanoids, birds, animals and cars acting by means of procedural and AI. In the film Avatar, it was applied also to plant life and used to control plant growth in ground cover over large terrain areas.