Crowd forming a shape?

[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Hello,

Excuse the noob question, but i have a project where the crowd must run from random positions on the screen, towards the center to create a word or number. Is it possible for golaem to do that?  As to have the target locator be a custom shape or plane for them to end their animation?

Thank you,

Sebastian

[Thomas François]

Hello Sebastian,

There are some ways to make this kind of simulation.

You could for example create a basic particle animation with a text as the particle goal and then drive your crowd on your particles.

An easier way would be to create a poptool using the paint mode of golaem (I am sharing a pdf explaining the relative workflow). Generate another poptool with the same number of particles. Click create and generate your entities. 

Give them a navigation behavior.

Create a groupEntityType and assign it the behaviors navigation and set formation in parallel.

Now map the poptool as the formation in the Formation behavior and select the binding algorithm.

Et voila!

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Thomas

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[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Hello!

Thank you Thomas for the in depth explanation and your patience.

Unfortunately i did everything in the pdf and your screenshots, but my particles are standing still, and the ones from the logo and the particles from the plane appear at the same time, so its not just one system. 

I maybe got lost with the creation of a group entity, in the sense that i just create it and add the entityType 1 to it. 

Also, the second poptool, i create it with the same particles as mentioned (although in my logo, the actual number of placed particles is less than what i set, no matter the rows and columns), but i create the terrain on the plane that i used to paint the logo on. Or sould i just duplicate the first pop tool?

Is there a go to shape behaviour i need to add?

[Thomas François]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:18 PM, Sebastian Plamadeala <tip...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello!

Hello Sebastian,

 

Thank you Thomas for the in depth explanation and your patience.

 

Unfortunately i did everything in the pdf and your screenshots, but my particles are standing still, and the ones from the logo and the particles from the plane appear at the same time, so its not just one system. 

I maybe got lost with the creation of a group entity, in the sense that i just create it and add the entityType 1 to it.

 

One entitytype inside a group entitytype should be just fine. 

 

Also, the second poptool, i create it with the same particles as mentioned (although in my logo, the actual number of placed particles is less than what i set, no matter the rows and columns),

In order to have more particles when you paint it you can increase the radius.

 

but i create the terrain on the plane that i used to paint the logo on. Or should i just duplicate the first pop tool?

No don't duplicate the "paint poptool" as you want some random shape at the beginning of your simulation

Place your "goal" particles with the paint tool but do not create a crowdfield with it just your goal particle. Then create another poptool bigger that the first one but with the same amount of particles. Create your crowdfield (and another particle field) with this poptool.

Now create a navigation behavior for the only entitytype you have in the scene and create a groupEntityType with another navigation and the SetFormation.

 

Is there a go to shape behaviour i need to add?

 

The be SetFormation should do the job. 

On the screenshot you've send the entities are already placed upon the goal particles? Is it on purpose?

There are still characters outside the logo shape so it may not be the same number of particles.

Or maybe the crowdfield uses both particle fields? (they are both blue....) 

Watching your behavior editor there is a groupEntity type not working well maybe your entities are mapped to it?

Notice: in order to be able to move and to avoid each others you should create the the text shape and then add some distance between particles. Then replace the particle system by leaving crowdfield on none selecting the particle system and clicking the replace button (at the end of the screenshot).

Something I forgot to tell you: creating the poptool the number you indicate is the maximum number of particles the poptool can create. See there is 10 columns and 6 rows so the number of particles we should get is 60.

You can verify this number by going into the particles attributes.

I hope this helps,

Cheers,

Thomas

[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Thank you again Thomas for your patience and wonderful insight.

I did get a better result with the bigger radius for the paint, but my particles are still standing still.

My workflow:

1. Create poly plane.

2. Create pop tool with image as a brush. Set the max particles to ~4000 particles, number of actual particles is 950, verified in the particle count also. I create it with "new particle" system, but with NO crowdfield.

3. I create a new pop tool, with 950 max particle number, with random column and rows, with New particle system and New crowd field. Verify the particle count to be 950.

4. create Entity type 1, with the crowd man sample.

5. create group entity 1 and add the entity type 1 to it.

6. set behaviours as mentioned and mapped the formation to my goal particle system.

7. Simulation gave error on entity type 1 navigation behaviour "no Terrain". I manually set the terrain so the polyplane for both poptools.

8. simulate, but there is no movement.

Note: there is no entity type added to neither poptools. I did tests adding both group and entity type to the poptools, different combinations, still no movement. I am attaching the maya 2014 binary, maybe by some miracle you will be able to take mercy on me and take a look sometime. 

Thank you again so much for your help,.

Sebastian

[Alexandre Pillon]

Hi Sebastian,

We created a complete tutorial in the help section: http://golaem.com/content/doc/creating-your-logo-crowds

Maybe it can highlight what is missing in your workflow?

Cheers,

Alex

[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Hello!

Thank you so much! Indeed it explained the flaws in my workflow!

It is a great tutorial!

One single question though, i studied other tutorials and the references, but i cannot find how to control the animation duration. Meaning the speed of the animation, how long it takes for the particles to form the shape. I tried checking the "edit motion" in the motion clip attributes and modified the root transition and framerate and etc, re-run the simulation, but still the same velocity in the particles. Any ideas?

Thank you so much for your support! You are great!

Sebastian

[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Hey guys!

Mental ray shader issue... When i select my render to be mental ray, i do not get the import shader script running. And my render check says the shaders are missing. In my attempts, i have orange crowd, but most of the time i have Black crowds. So mental ray sees the shader but no texture on it?

Is there any way to force a reimport of the shaders?

Thank you

[Nicolas Chaverou]

Hey Sebastian,

Is there a chance you tried to import the shaders several times in the scene ? Usually once is enough.

I would recommend cleaning the scene first:

- delete the geometry you've imported which is linked to the shaders (the CrowdMan geometry if you're using the samples)

- In the Hypershade / Edit / Delete Unused nodes to delete the shaders no more used.

Then, once cleaned, you can go in the Crowd Render Menu and use the Import Shaders button to import your shaders properly

If that doesn't solve the problem, can you send your scene and assets ?

Cheers,

Nicolas

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[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Thank you for your reply!

It worked, thank you very much. I do not know why it didn't activate the script by itself.

Now about the speed of the animation of the walk of the crowd? Right now they are forming the logo in 900 frames, which is pretty long to render and time. Where can i input the duration or velocity of the particles or crowd?

Thank you!!!

[Nicolas Chaverou]

No problem.

I guess you're controlling the particles with a Navigation behavior. Just change Speed & Acceleration attributes in the Behavior:
http://golaem.com/content/doc/golaem-crowd-documentation/navigation

Best,

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[Sebastian Plamadeala]

Hello!

I tried to modify all three values, but no change in the speed.

I have two navigations, like the tutorial states. and i inserted the same values in both. One from the group entity and one from the enity type I tried random speed min from 5, 9, 50, and 500 values, with random speed max values from 6, 12, 70, and 700. Acceleration from 2.5 to 30.  Unfortunatly no change in my speed.

Anything i need to enable before?

[Thomas François]

Hello Sebastian,

The speed of your entities while using the locomotion behavior depends on the max speed of the motions you've loaded in the locomotion set. In order to get more velocity availability you could for example load a faster run cycle (In the tutorial I haven't load any run cycle, so the characters won't be able to run). 

Another way would be to duplicate your faster motion clip and give it a higher ratio for example 1.5. Your character will be able to walk 1.5x faster. (not very realistic).

Here is some documentation about how the locomotion Behavior works: http://golaem.com/content/doc/golaem-crowd-documentation/locomotion

Cheers,

Thomas

 

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