CROWD SIMULATION

[dynafx]

What is a Crowd Simulation ?

A Massive Crowd Simulation is a computer simulation of a crowd of
agents. Agents are digital characters with a certain artificial
intelligence. The individual agents can act on their own, they don't
need to be pre-programmed or scripted, they respond on their
environment without external control. They walk along a path, group
together, hold distance, align with others, fight, patrol, get hurt,
and can even die in their world.



recently came across this freeware project of crowd simulation



http://nwserv3.hta-bi.bfh.ch/Home/swc/DemoJ3D/Crowd_Sim_Fram /



free plugin

http://www.harkyman.com/bp.html











chk out!!!!!

[the dOktoR]

Yea baby finally... My fav topic In 3d crowd sim.... If a very important links from dynafx... if you guys think that Character Studio Crowd, and softimage behaviour (used in Shark Tale, the One) is the best thing thts happnd... look wht dyna found...

[dynafx]

hmmm, actually, this is a nice freeware for the crowd simulation , i
will take more than a week to lay my hands on this, if somebody tries,
pls post someuseful info on this topic.

[Abhishek]

That seems great dude.. loads better than the CS crowd simulation, havent tried Behavior.. will try this on my crowd ASAP....

[dynafx]

How create a simple crowd (in maya)

INTRODUCTION



To execute this tutorial you must download and install CrowdMaker 0.5 (or higher).
You can download the file at this link: web.tiscali.it/maya_tutorial .
The "CrowdMaker 0.5.rar" contains some scripts, a text file with an installation guide and sample scenes.
On the next pages you can see the procedure to create a scene and the avaible functions to control the scripts.
We limit the simulation to only 15 particles, the script work with a maximum of 1000 (visible in the next image).

Before beginning make sure to have a simple 3D model of a human and some animation clips.
You can find on the web many pages that provides free Motion Capture material.

SETUP

We will create the scene shown in the following image, there are 15 particles and three obstacles of various dimension.
The locator on the right of the image is the target, the particles follows this target.
The particles interact with each other and with the object in the scene, the interaction
with the object simulates the obstacle avoidance and prevent the collision.

Create a group of 15 particles with the command Particles/Particle Tool.
Choose the spheres rappresentation on the attribute "Render Type".
In the next page we change the spheres rappresentation to point before to apply the instance with the human model.

Create a locator (Create/Locator) and put it on the right side of your scene.
After that you apply the script, the particle follows the locator like a target.
Insert some Key Frame to the locator to obtain more complex movement, in the next image you can see the animation path.

Now you must apply the scripts to allow particles to simulate
more complex movement. Select in order the particles and the locator,
on the Shelf Tabs you can find the new shelf "Crowd Maker", apply the
Create function. Execute OK to apply the script.

If you press play you can see the particles that follows the target. It
has the same direction and velocity for two reasons: they don't have a
initial velocity and the value of the Alignment function is too high.
The Alignment function control the influence that each particle have to
another one. We will learn about the script on the next page. Try to
insert inside the Expression Editor (Window/Animation
Editors/Expression Editor), on the Creation section this expression:
vel0= <<rand (-1, 1), 0, rand (-1, 1)>>; and try to insert
on the Output Function of the Crowd Maker Setup window 0.01 for
Alignment. Restart from frame 0 to see the new path of the particles.
You can change the value of the attribute to obtain new particles
motion.

Select the particles and press the Setup icon on the Shelf, a new window will appear.
This window allows you to setup the control value of the script.

The section "Obstacle Avoidance" provides controls to setup the script
that manages the interaction with the obstacles in the scene. "Cylinder
Length" represents the length of an imaginary cylinder on the front of
the particles, you can imagine this like a sensor. If the sensor touchs
an object, this will be an obstacle and then the particle will rotate a
little to avoid collision. "Cylinder Radius" represent the diameter of
this sensor. "Rotation Angle" instead is the rotation angle to avoid
the obstacle. It is represent in radiants (0.017 radians = 1 degree).

"Separation"
gives the particles the ability to interact each other to prevent the
collision: the function generates a repulsive force to reject the other
particle. "Visibility Radius" defines the perimeter, each particle
inside this perimeter generates and receives a repulsive force.
"Alignment" finally provides the ability to align the direction and the
velocity of a particle with the direction and the velocity of all the
particles inside the perimeter of its "Visibility Radius".

This function is very useful in situation like a group of soldier that runs in a battle.
In this case the path of every soldier is similar to the motion of the entire group.

The last section called "Output Function" allows to join with a
weight all the functions seen before. The default values are not
definitive. In general a parameter with a high value has a big
influence to generate the speed and the final direction."Seek" provides
the ability to follow a target."Scale Value" instead controls the final
velocity of each particle.

Now we insert obstacles in the scene, in this version (Crowd Maker 0.5)
obstacle avoidance is 2D. To speed up the script the obstacles are
consider like nurbs circle, complex geometries can be placed inside a
circle to approximate the shape. Every nurbs circle must have a new
attribute called "radius" with the value equal to its radius. Execute
Create/NURBS Primitives/Circle to create the object, create the new
attribute and setup it with a correct value.

We create an obstacle with a small table and four chairs, on the next figure you can see the geometry inside the circle.
We set the "radius" attribute to 1.2.

To simplify the simulation we use only three obstacles.
Remenber to set up the attributes with correct values, otherwise you will see unexpected situations.
Select all the circle created and execute from the Shelf the function AddObstacle.
The circle will be rename with the prefix "CMObstacle_", the script consider obstacle all the geometry with this name.

To see the new particles motion you must restart your Time Slider (to
frame 0 or 1), the script loads the parameter of radius and position in
the first frame. The script is recalled in the Creation section of
particles! The previus image shows a complete scene with the particles,
the locator and the obstacles. We will execute the instancer function
between particles and real geometry.

For this step a human model with low number of polygons and a clip is necessary.
We will execute an instance between particles and four copies of geometry; different clip
must be applied at each geometry copies to obtain 15 people that runs in various way.
Now import the geometries and apply the 4 different clip; for every clip
set up the attribute Post Cycle to a sufficient value for the entire simulation.

Now execute Particles/Instancer(Replacement) between particles and the four precedent objects.
To assing different animation clip to every particles, inside the Instancer menu set up opportunely the ObjectIndex attribute.

We have finished the simulation, the next image shows the complete scene.
With the Crowd Maker menu you can control all the attributes of the script, try many values to find the best result.
To obtain a uniform movement of the crowd you must set a high value for Alignment.

On the next image we can see some of the animation frame.

In this example we have created a scene with only 15 particles, the
script works with a maximum of 1000. You can download examples and some
scripts from the main page, all the software was provided in a rar/exe
archive on the Script section.

http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/maya/crowd/

[Arillious]

um the crowdmaker link doesn't work anymore is there a way that i

can get the crowdmaker from somewhere else? im trying to follow

the maya tutorial



thanks,



Arillious

[Arillious]

is there a verision for maya 5.0

 

[dynafx]

Arillious:: you can directly get details about maya 5.0 version here http://web.tiscali.it/maya_tutorial/



PS: howcome u havent upgraded to latest version??

[Arillious]

i haven't upgraded because it costs money  and in that link it says there are only files maya 6.0 and 6.5 not 5.0

 

arillious

[dynafx]

though it is for maya 6.0, did u try it in maya 5.0, i think, there
should be loophole to work with older version, PM me, if u r struck
with the procedure,

since these are based on scripts, it should work with older version too,

did u try asking help directly from the link, i'e posted earlier.

[Arillious]

i installed the files ass followed but when i loaded up maya5 there was an error with the crowd maker shelf it said something about it not being a recognized file or something. but when i cliced ok the crowd maker shelf was ther but no commands were there. and its not because i didn't install right becasue i did. i justthink that the crowd maker doesn't work for 5.0

shure would be nice if i could get my handson a copy of maya 6.5

[dynafx]

"Simulating Crowd-Motion using Behavioural Animation"

ABOUT

"Simulating Crowd-Motion using Behavioural Animation" is title of my diploma for the grade of Diplom Informatiker (FH) at the University of Applied Sciences Dortmund
which I successfully completed in May 2000. You'll find the paper on
the topic , the implementation of the findings and some sample
animations generated with my software. This work is heavily based on
the findings of Craig W. Reynolds, the man who released papers on
behavioural animation first and inspired people to use such techniques
in films like "The Lion King" (Disney) or "Jurassic Park" (Universal) to animate crowds. Visit his website, it is an excellent starting point for many highly interisting topics of computer graphics and artificial intelligence.

Check out my work and I'd be happy to hear your comments and critics.
You are free to use everything for personal or educational use. If you
want to earn money with this, please contact me and we'll surely come
together.

DIPLOMA 

Creating
computer animated crowd scences for use in film, television and other
media is an area, where traditional techniques used in computer
animation can only be used with great difficulties. This paper deals
with one possible approach for creating these kinds of scenes at
relativly low expense: Behavioural Animation. A implementation model is
presented, based on so called autonomous agents, their physical
properties and steering behaviours. It is examplary implemented in the
simulation software bugz, including an interface to the animation
packages Maya 2.5, Lightwave 6.0 and Cinema 4D XL.

download	-	Diploma "Simulation von Gruppenbewegungen durch Verhaltensgesteuerte Animation" (Adobe Acrobat PDF, 547 KB, German version available only)
	-	UML Class-Modell  (GIF, 30 KB)

BUGZ

bugz
is a standalone behavioural animation system.With bugz you can create
autonomous characters, change their physical attributes and apply
various predefined steering-behaviours (you can even change them over
time by using so called "triggers"). Finally you are able to create
nice looking crowd motions by simulating their interaction in a
2d-world. Besides pure viewing pleasure, the motion data can be used in
a computer animation package (plugins are provided).

In
case you are interested in source code, you'll find the code for the
most important functions at the end of my paper. If you are intersted
in the whole code, feel free to contact me.

download	-	bugz 1.0 win (ZIP 380 KB) incl. example simulations and import scripts for Maya, Lightwave, Cinema4D XL
	-	bugz User Manual (Adobe Acrobat PDF, 191 KB, English)

ANIMATIONS

All sample animations were created using bugz, Lightwave 6.0 and Cinema 4D XL 5.0.

All movies are using the popular DivX ;-) Codec. Get it here!

	Seek - 1001 kb Seek-behaviour causes the bugs to align their orientation towards the specified target. If a bug continues to seek, it will pass through the target, then turn back to seek it again.
	ObstacleAvoidance: Circle - 700 kb Bugs try not to crash in the circle by checking if they'd hit in in the future and if so, steer away from the circle.
	Cohesion - 560 kb Bugs with this behaviour will try to approach and form a group with other nearby bugs by heading for the average position of these bugs.
	ObstacleAvoidance: Group - 1981 kb A example of a combination of various steering beaviours: Seek makes the bugs move in one direction, separation prevents them from crowding together, cohesion keeps the group together, obstacle avoidance helps them not to crash in the box.
	Bonus: Fireflies - 509 kb All the bonus animations are examples of autonomous agents seeking (moving) targets using the MothSeek behaviour, which causes a bug to move around a target in elliptical paths, much like a moth seeking a light bulb.
	Bonus: Flies - 705 kb
	Bonus: Fish - 1499 kb

http://www.kolve.com/thesis/thesis.htm

[Arillious]

you know man i think you just helped me out alot with this thing. umm i dont know why or how you went throught the trouble to do this for me but i appreciate it alot. and as for a thanks all i can do is just post an animation that i make to show you. so thanks man! 

Arillious

[Arillious]

um just your given opinion, is this as good as the crowd simulater for maya 6

[dynafx]

Originally Posted by Arillious

 and as for a thanks all i can do is just post an animation that i make to show you. so thanks man! 

Arillious

That will be great, if you make use of these links, and post some animation.



i dont know, whether its exactly like of maya, but , i started this
thread for an individual crowd maker plugin, irrespective of the
software, but not many are interested in these topics, i was forced to
post links related to  software helps,

i think, crowd simulation in XSI is good, if u understand it better,

all the best

[dynafx]

MAYA, PLUGINS - brainbugz

Big Thanks for Beta Testing go to : Bruno Pollet (Alias|Wavefront Europe), Max Parovsky (Hidden Dragon Films, L.A.), Thomas Herrmann (Second Unit, Munich)

DESCRIPTION

brainbugz is a set of A|W Maya nodes and commands that enable you to use behavioural animation
techniques on particles. A particle system is a system in which forces
such as gravity or wind are applied to mass-points, so that these
mass-points change their position in space. In contrast to this, in
behavioural animation mass-points are not forced from the outside,
forces are self applied based on physical attributes and one or many behavioural rules. These so called steerings desires
can be clever combined and attached to a number of mass-points, so
these mass-points are no longer simple physical objects, but become
autonomous characters, referred to here as ?bugs?.
This
concept tries to reflect real life on an abstract level, where all
characters act based on individual behavioural rules, their view of the
world and the other characters surrounding them. Think of a school of
fish, a flock of birds, athlets running a marathon - all groups of
individuals with local behavioural rules (avoid touching the other
characters, get from point A to point B, try to stay near the other
group members, ...), but the sum of all indicidual local movements
results in a more or less coordinated crowd motion.

EXAMPLEs

	Spiders - 4,23 MB (Quicktime 6, MPG 4) A bunch of spiders, crawling on uneven terrain and avoiding obstacles. Behavioural particle motion was converted to paths using this tool. Spiders driven by an expression based walking system for legged motion were attached to these paths. In case you don't have QT6 installed there is a Playblast of the animation available here (QT, Sorenson 3, 7.8 MB)
	Flocking - 897 KB (Quicktime, Sorenson 3) Particles performing the infamous flocking behaviour.

FEATURES

- 13 different steering desires:

   individal bug based: head direction, wander

   target based: seek, moth-seek, arrival, pursuit, shadow, following of curve / surface, obstacle avoidance

   neighbor based: alignment, cohesion, separation, keep distance

- all desired can be used as stand alone force fields

- desires can be combined with each other and / or standard fields to achieve complex higher level behaviours (e.g. flocking)

- easy to use interface, no scripting needed to setup a behavioural system

SCREENSHOTS

The connection editor which lets you set up even complex behavioural systems very fast without the need for any scripting:

 

DOCUMENTATION

brainbugz Documentation (opens in a new browser window)

DOWNLOAD

Choose your OS and your Maya version. Before downloading anything, please make sure you have read and understood the disclaimer!

 

	Maya	FILE
Windows XP / 2000	4.0	brainbugz v1.0
	4.5	brainbugz v1.0
	5.0	brainbugz v1.1
	6.0	brainbugz v1.2 (Thanks Lutz Paelike!)
	6.5	brainbugz v1.2 (Thanks to Peter Kovacs!)
Mac OS X	6.0	brainbugz v1.1 (Thanks to T-Sugar!)

DOCS & Examples	brainbugz v1.2

SOURCE CODE	brainbugz v1.2

ALL IN ONE	brainbugz v1.2 (alternative location Highend3D)

 

http://www.kolve.com/mp_brainbugz/brainbugz.htm



Look on highend3d.com under plugins/Dynamics/FX for maya 6 compile for brainbugs

[dynafx]

Project: Crowd Simulation Framework: Summary

CSF-Crowd Simulation Framework A Massive Crowd Simulation is a computer simulation of a crowd of agents. Agents are digital characters with a certain artificial intelligence. The individual agents can act on their own, they don't need to be pre-programm Development Status: 5 - Production/Stable Operating System: OS Independent (Written in an interpreted language) Programming Language: Java Topic: Graphics, Visualization Translations: English, German Project UNIX name: crowd Registered: 2004-04-29 23:31 Activity Percentile (last week): 90.57 View project activity statistics View list of RSS feeds available for this project

Developer Info    Project Admins: knube til77 Developers: 2 [View Members]

Latest File Releases

Package Version Date Notes / Monitor Download crowd_1.0.0 crowd_1.0.0 May 11, 2004 - Download

http://sourceforge.net/projects/crowd/

[dynafx]

[CLICK HERE] TO READ THE ARTICLE

[Arillious]

hey um i have a prob with the single chain solver and i wondre if anyone can help me. i set up my leg skeleton with foot hip, knee, ankle, ball, toe knuckle, and toe. when i use single chain solver on the ankle to the ball it moves my skeleton from its origional pose. i tryed the joint orientation thing and i dont know what else could be the prob! so if u can pls help any one

[dynafx]

NEW - Simulation with 100 particles (Crowd Maker 0.6 beta 2). Download  Test_CrowMaker0.6_DivX.avi or Test_CrowdMaker0.6.mov (DivX / QuickTime) to view the animation. http://web.tiscali.it/maya_tutorial/ Crowd  Maker  behavioural animation for Maya particles - v0.6  Adriano Rinaldi - rinaldi.adriano@gmail.com