Generating Animated Crowds using LowPi
Generating Animated Crowds using LowPi
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Crowd simulation for stills is one thing. Having crowd simulations in animations is a different story altogether - or is it? :)
With the incredible and powerful Crowd Generation System for LowPi, animating our massive crowds can be just as easy as our stills!
I'll show you how I'm doing it, and provide tips on how to take this further - let your imagination guide your way!
The above image is the result of my first test using All of my animated pose sets that I created - walkers, stand/talkers, and sitters. You'll see how I put this all together in such a way that we can use these random crowds over again in the background or extreme foreground in other projects.
This episode certainly is Different than the usual Creative Cart in that, this one is all a series of Lessons regarding a single series of products.
There's a Lot to learn about this whole system that might seem daunting at first.
The instruction manuals are Excellent and the Digital Art Live Course on the subject ROCKS.
In this Creative Cart, however, we'll really simplify things by Showing you - in easy steps - how all of this works.
Because I am who I am, and I do what I do, we'll also have a few lessons on making and utilizing animations for LowPi that can then also be used for our Crowd Generation!!!
Such an Elegant way to add moving low-resolution crowds into any scene!!! ...and No. You don't need a Super Computer to do it! I'll be showing some really cool tricks that we can use to make sure that we're working WITH our computers - not Against them!
The Crowd Generation Bundle for LowPi Low Poly Person (below left) along with the Pro Scripts pack (below) is everything we need to get into all of this, and I'll demonstrate in detail how we can make fantastic Crowds-in-Motion Using nothing more, along with our own animations that we create ourselves.
It's a Genius design that took the team through many trials and ingenuity to get this thing Rockin the way they did - it's an Incredible System!
The ProScripts Pack enables us to create our own "modules" for use in the Crowd Generation System.
WearKits - This is a collection of 'wearables' made for LowPi Low Poly Person. This is how we set up different versions and colors of any number of outfits that the system can randomly assign to the types of people we choose for these garments to apply to. For example, we can make special clothing for the kids only, gender-specific outfits - or we can allow the system to apply the clothing to literally anyone. We can include any number of material options and more. The main Crown Generation System includes a large variety of Wearkits and ProScripts includes the toolkit that allows us to create our own - and it's a very robust system.
PoseKits - is the system that determines the randomly selected poses available for the random person being placed. It is this toolkit that we'll use to add animations to the system - and I'll provide some very useful tips on doing just that - without ending up with a big mess in the end! PoseKits are cool. We can make them for people who are standing idle, sitting, walking... whatever we want, even mix them. Then we create our special PoseKits that we'll select in the final LowPi Set Builder and assign which PoseKit (collection of poses that can be randomly selected) are available to whom, and with options to choose from.
PropKits - Yeah... you guessed it! PropKits are modules that we create that can assign smart props to our LowPi Low Poly People randomly. These are not just smart props, but wearable that include smart props. Using 'conditions' we can specify which poses are available if this person is generated with a smart prop, which helps to make them make sense in the scene. Again, a very well thought-out module builder that allows us to get truly customized with out LowPi People!
LowPi Set Builder - This is the final stage in the ProScripts module building process - where we combine our people with their available poses, wearable, and props, and give them their own unique label which can be selected in the Crowd Generator, just like the ones that come with the main set! So Cool!
Hey Dartanbeck, what if we have the Crowd Generation Bundle, but not the ProScripts just yet. Can we still animate our crowds?
Absolutely - and I'll show you how to do that as well.
But I must say, the Crowd Generator gives us random results, whereas if we apply our animations to LowPi without adding them to PoseKits, we have to apply them manually to selected figures.
It's still very cool, but as Lyrra has pointed out:
"These randomly generated poses always manage to tell their own stories with each random generation."
Ever since I read that comment, I've noticed how incredibly true that is - and I even work those stories further with additional tweaks to the animations!
(below) On a smaller scale, Rosie and her animated friends remind us that Summer is Coming!
Getting Custom!
Getting Custom!
Everything that comes with any of this system includes a manual that shows us how it all works, and often gives practical examples.
One of those things is how to create new outfits from our existing collections of clothing and/or hair from Genesis 1-9. There are clones built in to auto-fit from any generation of Genesis and the M4/V4 families, and then we can save our new pieces and create new, custom wearables that can be included in the randomly selected garment collections (WearKits).
I'll demonstrate an excellent workflow for creating your own LowPi costumes for use within the system - and show how to add them as WearKits, which we can assign to our Random Selections within our own new LowPi Set that we can select as an option in Crowd Generator!
A Wonderful Digital Art Live Session!!!
A Wonderful Digital Art Live Session!!!
Two sessions, actually
In the first session, Totte (Code66) takes us on a journey through many of the possibilities we have with the Crowd Generation Bundle and whatever scenery we have to use.
His demonstration within the Egyptian Museum Exhibit really opens one's eyes to how very differently we can have our crowds 'behave' within a single result from the Crowd Generator. Truly amazing and impressive.
It truly reveals how carefully designed and well-executed this whole system has become throughout its development. Kudos to the whole team!
Then FeralFey demonstrates her techniques for posing figures in general, and especially for the LowPi figure!
In the second session Totte takes us deep into the ProScripts - this is how we set up our own, custom crowd generations - from basic differences in what is already there, to making all new, totally unique crowds designed around our specific needs!
Awesome Stuff, and frankly, I could really listen to Totte speak all day! :)
Check out the store page for more info on this nice set. There's a Ton of information about it as well as a short teaser video.
Getting More Precise with our Crowd Generation through Extensions
Getting More Precise with our Crowd Generation through Extensions
LowPi Crowd Generator Plus Extension
LowPi Crowd Generator Plus Extension
LowPi Crowd Generator Plus extension will take your LowPi crowd generation to new heights with the two modules PopPlus and InstanceAdjuster. It also has a few extra tools to make your life creating crowds with LowPi easier and more effective.
PopPlus; Powered by the HedgeMaker plugin, this extension will automatically adjust your LowPis to the ground, no need to spend hours adjusting the markers when you are populating on uneven ground.
InstanceAdjuster: By placing the unique LowPis closest to the camera, and the repetitive instances away from the camera, the crowds now looks even more lifelike and believable.
LP Marker Adjuster: Powered by the HedgeMaker plugin, it will adjust your markers perfectly to the ground. Even if you do not needed them perfectly adjusted when using PopPlus, it still makes it much easier to see where they are.
LP Mesh Merger: This tool merges a number of selected items in the scene into one invisible mesh that can be used by PopPlus to collide the placed LowPis with.
LP Set Extensions On/Off: Two scripts to switch on or off Crowd Generation extensions. By switching them off, the Crowd Generator will work exactly as before.
* IMPORTANT NOTE: The HedgeMaker plugin is required with this product, and it’s used because it is a solid, stable and very fast plugin that does exactly what PopPlus needs.
Take your LowPi Crowd Generation to new levels with the LowPi Crowd Generator Plus extension and start to use all those beautiful environments that you have that have been a little tricky to use with crowds before.
This stuff is Fantastic!!! I'll be showing you how easy it is to use these things! So Powerful!!!
This stuff is Fantastic!!! I'll be showing you how easy it is to use these things! So Powerful!!!
The PathTool Extension is a powerful addition to the LP Crowd Generator, enabling precise and dynamic placement of LowPi figures along custom paths. With this tool, you can quickly create realistic crowd flows, marching lines, or scenic background characters that follow a defined trajectory.
Path Creation with LP Path Markers
Paths are constructed by placing a sequence of LP Path Markers in the scene. These markers define the curve or direction the LowPis will follow. The more markers used, the more refined and flexible the path becomes, supporting both straight and curved routes. Paths can also vary in elevation, enabling natural movement along terrain or ramps.
Population Modes
The extension supports three main population modes, determining where along the path the LowPis are placed:
Full - Populates the entire length of the path with LowPis.
Head - Concentrates the LowPis toward the beginning of the path.
Tail - Places the LowPis toward the end of the path.
These options allow for both fully filled crowds and dynamic formations like incoming or dispersing groups.
Population Types
To further refine crowd density and behavior, the PathTool provides several population types, which control how LowPis are spaced:
Sparse - LowPis are loosely spaced, ideal for casual movement or distant background figures.
Condensed - Tight spacing between LowPis, suitable for dense marches, parades, or crowds.
Increase - Spacing starts tight and gradually increases along the path, giving a sense of acceleration or dispersal.
Decrease - Begins with wide spacing and becomes tighter toward the end, simulating gatherings or converging movement.
By combining different population modes and types, you can craft a wide variety of crowd dynamics that match the tone and layout of your scene.
To help you adjust the LP Path Markers, there are two scripts, LP Show Path Rays and LP Remove Path Rays. With a ray attached to the LP Path Marker, you can easily see if the 'virtual ray' will hit the next marker or not.
"Don't miss out, add LowPi PathTool Extension to your LowPi Crowd Generation toolbox today to be able to easily create more realistic background LowPis on the move." ~ Totte
Getting More Variety through Crowd Creator Expansions!
Getting More Variety through Crowd Creator Expansions!
Ever want to get all dolled up and go to a nice, formal show?
Maybe a dance? Nice Dinner Party?
The Dinner and a Show Expansion makes everyone else in the room fit right in with the mood with gorgeous formal attire, and even wait staff making it all run smoothly
Clothing - sixteen new clothing items for Lowpi including a full Dress Suit and Tuxedo Suit preload, two evening gowns, and more.
The gowns both have many material options so you can combine the base material, transparency, color, and metallic flake colour for thousands of looks.
Hair - three new hair figures which share colour options with the base hair figures
Props - basic table, chair, and table cloth to make any scene into a restaurant. Modular movie theatre chairs to watch a show anywhere. Tableware and dishes. Wearable options for all the glasses, cutlery, and dishes with eating and drinking poses.
Poses - poses for sitting audiences, eating, drinking, and more with props included
Crowd Creator - crowd presets for formal events, cocktail parties, families at the dinner, and more
One of my first "Animated Crowd" tests. At this early stage of experimentation, I was already convinced that this was all going to be much easier than I thought it might be!!!
You never get just one zombie, do you? The Crowd Creator Undead Expansion will make your zombie horde come to unlife. Create massive crowds of unique zombies with the included Crowd Creator presets.
Sometimes the dead are older than others, and for this moment there is a brand new standalone geometry Lowpi Skeleton.
Only 4k polys, just a little bigger than Lowpi, the skeleton can be used in Crowd Creator to make the perfect shambling mass of skeletons to horrify your hero.
After a crowd is generated every single figure (and its instances) is still editable, poseable, and moveable.
Crowd Creators marker system makes it simple to indicate in your scene where to generate crowds of several hundred figures very simply, and if one or two are in a less than great location or wearing a distracting pink shirt, it's a matter of seconds to select and change it.
Included are zombie versions of all Lowpi skin colours, 4 new zombie eye textures, zombie versions of the modern Business and Modern Casual clothing, and two blood layers for hands and mouth. The zombie crowd is generated with all of Lowpi's various shapes as well as the brand new Emaciated shape for that shriveled zombie look.
The skeleton has four texture options. it can be used standalone or as a figure replacement for Lowpi so every pose or clothing asset made for Lowpi works with the skeleton as well.
A full set of poses for both zombies and skeletons has been included for use on single figures or with the Crowd Creator script.
If you want to use custom clothing on the skeleton, convert it to Lowpi first and save it. Then it will work when loaded onto the skeleton as well.
Dead or alive Crowd Creator has got you covered!
(above) An Animated Skelton Horde - most walking, yet there is also a rather large number of them standing (animated) in other areas of the scene which adds a lot of density. The animation here turned out really cool with Josh Darling/DimensionTheory's Animated VDB flames replacing all of the fire in The Knight's Castle, by Polish!
(left) Superimposed over the top, our hero enters the arena for a bit of slice and dice! ;)
It's that time of year again. Snow is piling up, the cold has settled in and people are bundled up warmly and enjoying the outdoors winter fun.
Populate your wintry landscapes with people bundled up in warm clothing, wearing hats, mittens and scarves, and carrying hot drinks and holiday shopping.
Winter sports include snowball fights, hockey, bandy, skiing, ice skating and shoveling. Ok so it's not a sport, but it's a workout.
A variety of lowpoly props, clothing items, poses and materials combine with Crowd Creator scripts to make generated winter crowds just minutes away.
Define your generation area and choose your crowd from the premade Crowd Sets including Caroling, Shopping, Strolling, Downhill skiing and more.
Extension Expansion for Crowd Generator
This Script Extension ROCKS!!!
I'll show you how it works :)
This Awesome extension expansion allows for precise generation of figured aligned with slopes - Just like PopPlus, but angles the generated LowPi to the angle of the slope - facing in the downward (default) or upward angle of the slope!
I created the image below use a Depth of Field (DoF) suitable for the 'hero' character that would fill the left third of the screen in front of this. This is where LowPi really excels - background people - background Crowds of Poeple!!!
LowPi Area and Slope made it Easy!!! Just define the borders (four simple markers) and I placed Block-Out markers where the ski lift elevation posts are, including the surrounding safety fencing to prevent placement in those locations.
It's crazy how much these expanded extensions add to what is already such a powerful system - but they just make it So Easy to set up and generate random crowds according to our own specifications! I Just Love It!!!
Populate your historical cities with medieval people living their daily lives. Peasants, noblemen. ladies, farmers, and shopkeepers with their own props, poses, and clothing.
Add life to your medieval fantasy scenes, renaissance cities, or village squares. You have the buildings, now add the people.
This is an expansion set for the Lowpi Figure Base and Lowpi Crowd Creator. You must have both of these products for this to work.
You can use these poses, props, and clothing with Lowpi standalone figure for single villagers or use the powerful crowd creation script to populate your scene with hundreds of unique villagers.
Includes
Props - Medieval scenery props and handheld items including baskets, buckets, torches, and pitchforks. Buckets, baskets, and sacks have several filler option materials. 'For Script' presets use a randomize script to pick a random filler material.
Poses - Medieval daily life poses for peasants and nobles as well as prop-using poses of all sorts
Clothing - A selection of clothing for peasants and nobility with many textures for all options. 'For Script' presets use a randomize script to pick random color materials.
Materials - a bonus set of shader presets for diffuse color only in appropriate medieval dyes matching the clothing in this set. Colors based on historical research.
Crowd Presets - several Crowd presets have been included for various scenes such as Noble Life, Peasant Life, Farmwork, Sitting at Tavern, and others
Going EPIC!
Going EPIC!
Throughout two of the lessons in this very different Creative Cart, we end up having this massive hoard of LowPi Marauders takes the stage on a grand scale - marching past the camera in this EPIC scene! I truly was not intending on making LowPi "Stars of the Show", but with these, we certainly can have that!!! :)
This image is one frame of animation which is the result of two major lessons in this Creative Cart episode: Creating Custom Wearables from content within our libraries and turning them into WearKits using the LowPi ProScripts. Then continuing that ProScripts lesson by using these new WearKits along with the Animated (optional) PoseKits that we made earlier, to create LowPi Sets that we can use within the LowPi Crowd Generator.
After that, I simply had to use these cool new custom LowPi characters to demonstrate the power of being able to generate crowds within up to five separate areas of a scene - each using their own, unique settings and LowPi Sets.
The result blew my mind! Seeing these incredible Marauders marching together, yet with uniquely different animations as they march and... Even though in the wearable creation process I've quartered the resolution of these already efficiently textured armor sets, they still look stunning - especially when we see this many of them rendering in Seconds! Yikes, this is Cool Stuff!!!
Some of the scenes we'll be working in
Some of the scenes we'll be working in
This is a fun outdoor environment and, in this episode we use it to generate ourself a really fun workflow for creating and working with animated crowds of people using this whole, incredible LowPi Crowd Generation System!
One of the things that I love about this kit is that we can opt for indoor or outdoor scenes - all with the same kit.
Since they're made together, they work together - looks-wise. Walk into this Theatre and find the same place inside.
Very nice setup and, as always, excellent poses!
Let's face it. I just wanted to play with this fun set!
We'll start by populating the boat with LowPi and prepping the scene for an animated render.
Next we'll add Rosie to the boat, add DoF to the camera, and drop in some iReal Animated Water for that iReal cinematic touch!
When it comes to animated VFX props ThePhilospher's iReal collection has got us covered!
What a wonderful wintery activities scene!
I was on a Mely3D kick - and, why not? Mely3D has been filling my library with Awesome Fun for So Many Years now!!!
Getting my hands on the Winter Wonderland expansion for the LowPi Crowd Generator, this immediately popped into my mind, so I ran to the store, dropped this into my cart, grabbed the Golf Course Bundle while I was at it, and... ROCK ON!!!
Now we can ski, sled, or just plain have a ball in the snow!
We're going to have some fun in this immense scene - not playing Golf, but having a party with Medieval LowPi!
This was just a fun option for demonstrating the use of the LP Mesh Merger and PopPlus tools from the LowPi Crowd Generator Plus extension, blocking off trees, sitting on the ground...
...and then populate it with the wonderful Medieval Life LowPi characters - doing their thing - partying it up or working away!
Like the i13 House Boat scene above, I'll be using one of the Skydomes from Ultimate Grass & Meadow - which have nice horizons and sky
Think of where to put my hoard of animated skeletons, I immediately thought of this or DzFire's Forsaken Keep or Village.
When I opened this one, I just kept going - it worked so perfectly for what I wanted to do.
Of course, being an animation, I went through the whole scene replacing the static flame elements with animated VDB fire - and I love how it all turned out!
My scenes will never be the same (in a great way!!!) since getting this incredible product!!!
Revisiting the Cyberpunk Car Chase
Revisiting the Cyberpunk Car Chase
We're going to revisit the Cyberpunk City Car Chase scene that I demonstrate in the Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio course - this time populating it with the groups of animated LowPi that we've created earlier for the i13 Theatre scene.
Because of the constant movement of the vehicles - and thus, the camera - I'll demonstrate a wonderful technique utilizing the "Constant" interpolation tweener to make More crowd without adding more people to the scene!
Of course, we still put a Lot of people in this scene!!!
I won't be going into detail on the scenery at all during the session, so let's explore it a bit here - for those of you interested in building something like this yourself that works perfectly with Linday's Four-Wheeler Animation Template: Car Chase add-on.
Linday's Car Chase aniBlocks add physically accurate vehicles movements that follow the city streets of Stonemason's Urban Sprawl 3, so I built a city that surrounds one of the city blocks to give it more of an endless appeal. With all five of the city blocks in the scene, I made several instances of these blocks to fill in gaps in the distance.
The wonderful thing about using instances for this is that, as we add the Cyberpunk details, the instances auto-populate in the same way!
Urban Sprawl 3 makes for a beautiful street environment as-is, so we can stop here if we want.
I wanted a truly cyberpunk feel to my city and in creating this, I'll have a really cool cyberpunk-style city that I can use for many other things - including all of the various car chase options.
For this I chose to use Polish's Cyberpunk Back Alley Bundle because it comes with full building replacements, cyberpunk scaffolding with neon signs all over them, all manner of props and details that work perfectly for such a thing.
There are other dystopian environment kits out there that I'm sure will work equally as well - so don't be put off on doing your own thing with what you have in your kit!
As I worked, I realized that Polish's full building props come with a lot of wonderful cyberpunk details built in and the lights glow beautifully in Iray. So I did quite a bit of full-building replacements for my city.
In addition to using all of the wonderful low-polygon-count vehicles from Urban Sprawl 3, I felt that the perfect way to populate the streets of cyber-city would be to use Sky Traffic by The AntFarm.
Even if we forget that fact that we can load low-resolution versions of each element of this cool pack of dystopian vehicles, they fit the look Perfectly!
On top of that, they don't have any wheels! No wheels means that we don't have any wheels to turn - and for creating a bunch of animated traffic through a busy city - traffic that is meant to be there to add density, a cool look, and motion - but not to take control of the attention of the audience... this is a very Good Thing!
Just move them around as city traffic and be done with it.
So I formed lines of traffic stuck in their lane - as traffic is in downtown Urbana - and inch them forward a bit here and there with an occasional drift into the bumper, and added a few other fun traffic motions. This was a very fun aspect of the project that I truly enjoyed doing. The previous version didn't have any of this.
Of course, no city street scene would be complete without street steam, right?
iReal Animated Clouds are Just the Ticket!!!
Seriously - I use these things All the Time - and not just for city scenes!
Actually meant to be animated cloud masses in the sky, I use these wonderful animated props for all sorts of things. Flip them sideways and the make Wonderful steam coming up from grates! Leave them in their original orientation and sneak them back behind buildings to add that traveling steam/fog effect... animated scenes look So Much Better (and more believable) with some good ol' cloud action going on!
When it comes to animated VFX props ThePhilospher's iReal collection has got us covered!
It's also a lot of fun using ideas like this to render out our results with LowPi Crowds Quickly and without and fuss!
ImagineX has plenty more wonderful products like these. CityScapes Backdrops and CityScapes Backdrops Volume 2 are perfect fro urban environments - I have a whole lot of the others in the Backdrops series as well - So Quick and they Look Great!!!
DimensionTheory's Sky HDRI packs are Always a great solution for these types of things - providing real-world lighting along with a wide variety of skies to choose from!
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