Crowd and group animation

A continuous challenge for special effects in movies is the production of realistic virtual crowds, in terms of rendering and behavior. This course will present state-of-the-art techniques and methods. The course will explain in details the different approaches to create virtual crowds: particle systems with flocking techniques using attraction and repulsion forces, copy and pasting techniques, agent-based methods. The architecture of software tools will be presented including the MASSIVE software used for the Lord of the Ring trilogy.The course will explore essential aspects to the generation of virtual crowds. In particular, it will present the aspects concerning information (intentions, status and knowledge), behavior (innate, group, complex and guided) and control (programmed, autonomous and guided). It will emphasize essential concepts like sensory input (vision, audition, tactile), versatile motion control, artificial intelligence level, and rendering techniques.The course will also presents the new challenge in the production of realtime crowds for games, VR systems for training and simulation and crowds in Augmented Reality applications for cultural Heritage (like adding virtual audience in Roma or Greek theaters).The course will be illustrated with a lot of examples from recent movies (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Ring, Shrek2) and real-time applications in Emergency situations and Cultural Heritage.