CrowdViewer: from simple script to large-scale virtual crowds

Visualization of large-scale virtual crowds is ubiquitous in many applications of computer graphics. For reasons of efficiency in modeling, animating and rendering, it is difficult to populate scenes with a large number of individually animated virtual characters in real-time applications. In this paper, we present an effective and readily usable solution to this problem. It accepts simple script which includes motion state and position information of each individual at each time step. Supported by material database and motion database, various human models are generated from model templates, and then driven by an agile on-line animation approach. A developed point-based rendering approach is presented to accelerate rendering. We test our system with script including 30,000 people evacuating from a sports arena. The results demonstrate that our approach provides a very effective way to visualize large-scale crowds with high visual realism in real-time.