CrowdFX People Attending Ceremony

[Frank1000]

Hi,
i want to create a crowdFX where people are standing idle attending a ceremony. So many different characters with animation that looks accordingly.

Question, how do i distribute different characters within the pointcloud ?



Here is a sample scene with simple non-rigged static characters (panoramic 180°)


Regards,
Frank

[gustavoeb]

Hi frank, it seems to me that this would be as simple as using a weightmap to drive emission. As for them all be point to and looking at the center of the room, you could set the orientation of paricles to point at that given spot (to drive the body orientation), and then use corwdfx look at constraint (to dive the head orientation).

[Frank1000]

Hey Gustavo, ok so use a weightmap to bring different characters into one point cloud ?

[Pancho]

Why would you like to have more than one point cloud? The actors are instances of the characters within a group, aren't they?

[Frank1000]

im ok with one point cloud. I want to have more than one character-model to be in a point-cloud. So I can have different men and women in the point-cloud and not only one character that is being duplicated.

[Bullit]

I think you can get that check the sample scenes, one ex: the stadium waving.

[gustavoeb]

Hey Frank I miss understood your question. To add new characters go under Actors > Inspect Actor Proxies. From there you can inspect actors that make up the sim, add new ones from your scene or import models from elsewhere. A cheap way to setup actors is to drop a default pedestrian and gator to your desired models.

As you add this new characters, they get automatically inserted into your crowdfx sim.

[Frank1000]

ok cool

[Frank1000]

ok i have the pedestrian and 2 more rigged characters in the scen. How do they get connected to the simulation ? Not sure if i have a simulation, when I go to ICE/CrowdFX/Simulation it creates an additional Crowd model ... guess i should connect them to the existing one instead. How is it done ?

[Bullit]

Shouldn't the answer to that question be in tutorials?

[Frank1000]

i have a scene where i once was able to put together 2 actors into the crowdFX, but when crawling through its crowd point cloud i don't find where actually the actors are being connected
When i select the pointcloud on the new scene with one actor in the crowdFX and go CrowdFX/Actors/Import Model as described in the manual, it imports the new actor and it creates one instance as well of the new actor but the actor is not really simulating although i have added actions to it on import ... it changes action on frame 1 but after that goes back and stays in t-pose.

any tip around where in the crowdFX manual part this actually is pointed out ? Reading it up and down but wasn't able to interpret it right yet. also checked "Loading Actors for the Crowd Simulation" and corrected the actors actions from slowest to fastest action but still ...

When I check the Actors inspector both actors are there

[gustavoeb]

Hi Frank it is the Actor ID attribute under emit_and_initialize tree. (1st image)

It is importante to notice your characters will move in T pose until you assign them some animations, you do that under the animation_blending tree. There is a Animation Definition compound (2nd image), you can duplicate it, go inside it and change characters. This could be slightly better exposed, but... it works

[Frank1000]

thx Gustavo
I did copy it and connected it (hope correctly). Then I opened it and changed the characters (do you mean the actor proxy ? or the way it animates ?)
Now the woman actor twice goes into an action position for 1 frame long and then back to t-pose .
Isn't the actions already added to the actor before when importing ? I can also see it in the

Also question, is there a shortcut to display an image smaller in posts and make it clickable for the large image as you did it ? Or do i have to save a small version as well and insert it with link to the large image ?

[Frank1000]

when comparing the working scene with 2 actors in the crowdFX with the new one (Man and Woman) I see that the working scene (the one with beige people) does not have Animation Blending in its simulation ice tree and still works fine. How do i need to understand it ?

[Frank1000]

ok gotit now how it was meant by you Gustavo, just needed some runs to grasp it. When adding a new actor to the proxy, and defining its actions, it didn't automatically add the "Define Animation State" and "Define Move Animation State" inside the Animation Blending / Animation Definition. I copied a pair, connected and adjusted them to the new actor and now it works fine

thx again

[Frank1000]

For the distribution of the different characters in the scene, i need to assign certain areas on the floor to specific actor-types. The red-jackets are in the rear, king in the middle, decorated actors on the right, and civil actors on the left.
Question a): Is it a good idea to use a floor grid per actor type and weight map paint points on where actors are positioned ?

Those actor-type groups will contain multiple different actors for variety and the goal is to have the sim to have the actors stand idle and just move the body randomly a bit while standing, changing leg they put their weight on etc., some probably make a slight step to the side or so.
Question b): Is it good to have the Actors at speed zero with different stand idle actions and randomize the action state behavior? Thing is they still need to avoid collision when moving slightly when standing very close to each other. So the sim needs to select a possible movement based ob available space ? Or what other ideas are around to tackle this ?