You could render chunks of them in passes if you are having issues with crowd size limits at render time. Crowd deals with a single poly mesh per actor, though you can have as many clusters with materials as needed.
The export crowd as fbx has issues with characters and textures, but I found that you can use the plot manager to output ice caches of the crowd instead You then have to freeze all of the history on the mesh proxies ( the single mesh that makes up each crowd grouping) .. Its a bit tricky to do it what with locked ops and some other dependencies on the crowd point cloud, but once its done, I read the ice cache back onto the frozen mesh proxies to get some awesome playback rates for pretty high crowd counts, at least for my purposes. I am impressed with the playback speed on the cached textured crowds once everything is finalized. With regards to action sources, make sure to turn off the 'cog' option in the actor proxy when you are importing idle actions into the crowd system. Adam On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Byron Nash <byronn...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks for the tips Adam. Some parts of it are beginning to make sense but > I still have that wandering in the dark feeling. I'm only needing to do a > fairly simple stadium crowd for wide shots. I think the hardest parts are > going to be dealing with the quantity of characters and getting them > exported to the people rendering them. > > > On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Adam Sale <adamfs...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Yes, and also remember that for move based states, you should have all >> the action sources in the one move state listed from slowest to fastest >> velocity so the crowd can pick the appropriate source based on the actors >> velocity. >> >> I didn't come up with a better way to treat idle based actions, other >> than having them added as one action per state. So with 4 idle actions, I >> used 4 states with unique names. >> >> Not sure if thats the best way to handle it, but I found it easy this way >> to pick and choose the appropriate state to pull based on the logic in the >> Behavior ICE tree. >> >> Also make sure that you define state transitions to account for all of >> the possible permutations from one state to another, and make sure you >> define whether or not the transition is bi-directional or one directional. >> >> Crowd makes a lot of sense once you have gone through it a couple of >> times. I really enjoy the changes that were made for 2014. >> >> Adam >> >> >> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 7:31 AM, Byron Nash <byronn...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Nevermind, I found it. If it was written down in the docs I missed it. >>> You need to define each state in the* Animation Definition* compound in >>> the *Animation Blending* tree. >>> >>> I'm sure I'll be back with a thousand more questions shortly. ;-) >>> >>> >>> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Byron Nash <byronn...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Actually, after looking at the sample scenes again, I don't see the >>>> Define Animation State node anywhere. When I get a default pedestrian and a >>>> basic pedestrian crowd, I still don't get the animation sources to show up >>>> in the drop down box inside Set Animation State node. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Byron Nash <byronn...@gmail.com>wrote: >>>> >>>>> OK, I think that sort of answers my question. You have to use *Define >>>>> Animation States* node to set up the states right? Where does that >>>>> node plug into for the defining? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:18 PM, Chris Chia >>>>> <chris.c...@autodesk.com>wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Hello Byron, >>>>>> You could do the following. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 1. CrowdFx > Simulation > New Basic Crowd >>>>>> >>>>>> 2. CrowdFx > Actors > Inspect Actor Proxies >>>>>> >>>>>> 3. Use the Import in the ActorProxies PPG >>>>>> >>>>>> 4. In the same PPG, Select your model and Click on Inspect >>>>>> Animations >>>>>> >>>>>> 5. Bring your action sources and apply the actions. >>>>>> >>>>>> 6. CrowdFx > Crowd > Draw Directional Emitter >>>>>> >>>>>> 7. CrowdFx > Simulation > Inspect Crowd Simulation Tree >>>>>> >>>>>> 8. You can now Define the Animation States in the >>>>>> Crowd.Point_Cloud.Animation_Blending,Animation_Definition. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> Chris >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: >>>>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Byron Nash >>>>>> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 4:18 AM >>>>>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com >>>>>> Subject: CrowdFX: Animation States >>>>>> >>>>>> I'm trying to set up a basic stadium crowd. I have tried following >>>>>> the help docs and used the "New Crowd with Collision Avoidance" and also >>>>>> "New Basic Crowd". I have the actors emitting properly and I have set the >>>>>> velocity to 0 since I want them to stay put. I'm getting tripped up with >>>>>> the States though. In the Behavior tree the Set Animation State node does >>>>>> not include the 3 animations I chose when I imported the actor. I do see >>>>>> those animations if I drill into the Get Animations Sources Core node. >>>>>> How >>>>>> do I get those actions to show up for use in the States tree? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >> >
