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Handling an army of UFO's is one thing, but things become complicated when you want to handle a mass of Bipeds which on top of that are animated !!
In this tutorial we're going to see how to create a crowd of Bipeds in Lightwave 3D (version 6.5 upwards).
The subject is a crowd carrying out a linear movement on a flat plane. I used this technique to create a crowd of 500 soldiers in the first trailer of Star Ancetor. In fact its more of a trick than a real crowd simulation, therefore, no question of recreating the crowds of "Retour du Roi" (Return of the King) or even the army of Anubis in "le Retour de la Momie" :) (The return of The Mummy)
Here are the different steps invloved:
1. Create a looping animation of a character running
2. Convert the animation into a morphing sequence
3. Create a crowd movement with Particles FX (PFX)
4. Creating the crowd
5. Final remarques
Cyril Kravtchenko is currently Senior Project Leader of his VFX company Obraz Studio.
Related links ...
www.kravtchenko.com The online portfolio of ::: Cyril Kravtchenko :::
www.obrazstudio.com ::: Obraz Studio :::
email : cyril@kravtchenko.com
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Create a looping animation of a character running.
First of all we need to animated a character who's running. You can use all the lightwave tools that are available and even the clothing simulation, but it is very important that the 1st and last frame of the animation are identical. I rapidly created a running animation over 15 frames (from 0 to 14), the frame 0 being identical to the frame 14. You have to loop the animation at frame 13 (from 0 to 13). Your character should be animated "in place", that is to say he should not advance, he should run as if he were on a treadmill (as one often does in a video game). His transfer should be carried out later using particles.
Here's a proposition of the running sequence to be edited over 9 keyframes (note that the first & last are the same). Of course its only an example and your free to work on the quality of the animation.
notes: Make sure that your character is at the right scale, otherwise this may create problems afterwards. For example, give him a height of 1m80. The parameters that I propose in this tutorial have in mind a character which is orientated towards Z-, that is to say that he should face the horizon towards Z negative ( however its very easy to adapt that to other axes).
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Convert the animation into a morphing sequence.
To generate a crowd of several hundred characters, its out of the question to use characters with 'bones'. That would consume too much memory & calcluation time, and practically unmanageable in Lightwave. On top of that we're going to use the "FX_Linker" function of Particles FX, therefore we absolutely need an animation contained in a single object.
To convert the 14 frames into a morphing sequence, we're in fact only going to convert 7 frames (1 frame in 2). We'll have enough precision so that the morphing (which is linear) is not perceptible.
Go to frame 0 and use the function "Save Transformed Object" which is on the "File" menu (of Layout)
Repeat this manipulation on frames 2/4/6/8/10/12. In the end you should have 7 objects with the same number of points.
note 1: Personally, for each of the objects I use the number of the frame and not the number of the object for the file name extension. This avoids getting mixed up during the conversion. The resulting files are: "Run0", "Run2", "Run4", etc.
note 2: If you have an objecttextured with bitmaps, you should use one or several UV projections so that the texture coordinates are always correct.
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Now, each of the objects needs to "morph" to recreate the original animation. Object 1 will morph to object 2, which in turn will morph to object 3, etc.
We're going to use an "old" function of Lightwave which is often forgotten, this is the morphing extension "Multi Target/Single Enveloppe", which allows us to have a single curve in order to manage all the morphings.
Under Layout, load your 7 objects and clone the first (we'll need it to loop the morphing animation).
Apply an "Object Dissolve" at 100% to all the objects (so that they're no longer visible) except for the first one which should remain visible.
Then in "Deform" of the "Object Properties" panel, we're going to apply the morphing target for each of the objects.
Here's how to define the targets:
note: The cloned object "Run0(2)" doesn't posses a morphing target, it simply serves to loop the animation.
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In order to define the morphing curve, don't forget to tick the "Multi Target/Single Env" on the first object. The principle of this function is as follows:
An envelope value of between 0 et 100 transforms object A into object B; a value of between 101 and 200 transforms object A into object C; a value of between 201 and 300 transforms object A into object D, etc.
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All that remains is to repeat the animation infinitely. To do this select "Repeat" in the "Post Behavior" of the Graph Editor :
click left
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Create a crowd movement with Particles FX (PFX)
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Now its time to create the crowd movement. We're going to use the particles of Particles FX.
Create a new scene & create a Null Object (Add/Add Null...) that we're going to name "CROWD".
In the "Object Properties" panel, in the "Geometry" tab, select "FX Emitter".
Here are the parameters in enter in the "FX Emitter":
The other parameters don't change ( parameters by default)
click above
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You should now have created 500 particles moving at 5m/sec within a squere of 50m, and all generated at the frame 0.
The "Particle resistance" parameters allow you to create fluctuations in speed between the particles (more natural crowd movement).
Here's the kind of animation that you should end up with:
click left for video
note 1: We're working with 200 frames (8 sec of animation at 25 images/sec), but you can increase the parameters if you wish ("Life time")
note 2: We're working in real measurements, make sure therefore that the character is also in real measurements. For example 1m80 high and not 30cm, in which case all the values will be false.
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INSIDE THE MODEL DATABANK
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