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Creating the crowd.
Now lets load our morphing sequence animation with the help of "Load Items From Scene...".
This function allows you to load a scene inside another scene.
You should now have your little running man in the middle of the particles. We're going to link each particle to a character with the help of the "FX_Linker".
NOTE ! SAVE YOUR SCENE BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER ! "FX_Linker" doesn't allow you to go backwards in case
you get the parameters wrong.
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Once you've saved your scene click on "FX_Linker"
Set up the "FX_Linker" as follows: click left
Note that we're cloning the first object of the animation, not the morphing targets. We're going to clone 500 of them. You can clone less to to a quick test. If you want to clone a higher number, you also need to increase the number of particles accordingly.
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Apply a Dissolve of 100% to the first object in the list (the object which is used for cloning) "Run0(1)" so that its no longer visible. In effect, this object will not be linked to the particles and therefore will be working "in place".
You should have something like this: click left
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When you view the animation you'll note that all of the characters run in the same way, there's no time difference between each character's running action, and so the result isn't very realistic. We'll fix that by applying time differences to groups of individuals. We're going to divide our crowd of 500 characters into 10 groups of 50 figures. We'll apply a time shift to 9 of them, the original group conserving its initial animation. Each of the groups will be shifted by 1.4 frames more than the preceeding one.
In order to do this open the Scene Editor and select the 50 first objects of the list, omitting the morphing targets. Start by selecting the object "Run0(2)". You should therefore have selected the objects "Run0(2)" to "Run0(52)".
To select several objects, select the first one then hold down the Shift key select the last one.
To apply a shift in the animation, select the "Shift Keys" menu (Still in the Scene Editor).
We'll apply a shift of 1.4 frames to each of the groups over 200 frames, because we've decided to work with 200 frames.
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To summarise:
The first group from "Run0(2)" to "Run0(52)" will be shifted by 1.4 frames
The second group from "Run0(53)" à "Run0(103)" will be shifted by 2.8 frames
The third group from "Run0(104)" à "Run0(154)" will be shifted by 4.2 frames
etc. up to "Run0(460)".
However, this is just an example, you could shift the number of frames that you want with whatever number of object groups you like. Just try to space out your shifts equally (here over 14 frames).
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Once your animations are shifted you should get something like this:
click left
note 1: You should begin playing your scene starting from frame 14. Yep, with this shifting manipulation some of the characters won't start running until the frame number 14. If you want to calculate an animation over a precise period, take this element into consideration.
note 2: The result is already much more interesting but we can improve things further by applying some slight changes in the duration of the animations. Proceed as before with the shifts but with "Scale Keys". Increase your animations in time with care, that is to say no big shifts, otherwise you could easily end up with characters which "slide" visibly. One can therefore fine tune the crowds realism, however I won't apply the change in this tutorial.
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Final Remarks
This technique is not very difficult to set up and can be quite impressive. Once you've set it up, its up to you to explit it to full advantage. Work on the scene set up, ceate a beautiful camera movement or place the camera on the floor whilst making it tremble to create the impression of a forceful crowd movement. Create an impressive background, add the noise of a shouting crowd and stamping feet. All these details will make you forget a technique which is not perfect, but which functions well for rapid shots or takes that are rich in detail. The eye can't be everywhere at once, especially for non techies !
You can also optimise the technique by the use of LODS (Level Of Details) : The more an object is far away, the more it is replaced by an object with simplified geometry. This technique isn't explained here but can easily be applied.
Although I don't have confirmation, I strongly believe that this technique has already been used in the trailer for "Age of Mythology" which was also created using Lightwave:
http://www.microsoft.com/games/ageofmythology/egypt_downloads.asp
You'll notice in the background some characters "sliding" in a rather ridiculous fashion, but the shot is so short that you don't really pay attention. A good solution is to use this technique only for distant characters, the foreground being animated with genuine characters animated with bones with all the precision of a traditional animation.
I think that this technique was also used in the trailer of "Diablo 2 Expansion"
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2exp/cinematics.shtml
here also you can see the characters sliding slightly but all the magic of Blizard & all the other elements of the shot make forget the slight flaw.
I used this technique myself for the crowd shot in the 1st trailer of "Star Ancestor" :
www.starancestor.com/movies.htm
remember that adding dust, a trembling camera, a magnificent decor, a good voice over, some beautiful music, can all help to make people forget little imperfections - the brain is occupied by too many elements :)
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INSIDE THE MODEL DATABANK
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