Deborah R. Fowler
Houdini Crowds First Steps
Posted on Jan 18 2016
Updated Sept 3 2017
Steps to creating a simple crowd simulation out
of the box in Houdini 16:
(If you are on a machine where you do not have
permission to write to the C drive, save your file first - Houdini
stores the baked agent data in a folder $HIP/agents which if the
file is not saved pointing to C:/Users/yourname)
1. Under the Characters Tab - select
Mocap Biped 3 or 2 (your choice)
2. Choose the animation type you want, and Bake
Agent (crowds shelf tool). You will be prompted with agent
name, name of animation (ie. walk), joints associated with foot
locking (new in 16)
3. Select Collision Layer and then Configure
Joint from the crowds shelf tool for later use
4. Create a grid, scale it up 10x
5. Crowd tools populate to put your agents on the grid - it only creates the number at that given time
- With nothing selected, Click populate - select agent
- Click grid - ta da
6. A crowdsource node was created – if you play
this, they walk in place
- adjust number etc. and
- Randomize tab to adjust many aspects for variation
7. With the crowdsource selected click simulate
With mocap2, walk it all works out of the box since it is the default action.