3ds Max® 2012 Bible

BONUS CHAPTER 8

Creating Character Crowds

IN THIS CHAPTER

Using Crowd and Delegates

Nobody likes crowds (except for certain types of bugs), but with the Character Studio's Crowd Animation tools, controlling crowds can be lots of fun. The fun comes when you realize that you would spend weeks animating by hand all the actions that are possible with the Crowd animation tools.

Characters included in a crowd simulation are called delegates, and these delegates can have assigned behaviors that tell them to follow a certain object or a certain path and to avoid designated objects. As you begin to simulate crowds, you'll delight in how much it is like taking the whole family shopping together, except the delegates actually do what you say.

Creating Crowds

Crowd systems are composed of two helper objects called Crowd and Delegate, but the system also can use other scene objects that can be avoided or followed.

Using Crowd and Delegate helpers

Crowd and Delegate helper objects are created using the Create Helper Crowd or Delegate menu commands. The Crowd object looks like a simple dummy object, and the Delegates are simple pyramids. Objects can be linked to a behavior object that travels along with it.

Several of the tools you need to define the crowd system are accessed from the Setup rollout, ...