From New Zealand, an article
From New Zealand, an article about 3d software called "Massive," which renders huge crowd scenes consisting of intelligent agents that react to their surroundings. Unfortunately, Weta Digital (the effects house doing the work) doesn't seem to have any more technical information available about the technology on their site, but there's some information available on the net avout the LotR digital effects in general: from Digital Producer, and ringfaq.com.