Explore the Blender crowd animation add-on, Population 2, developed by the esteemed Blender tools developer, Bproduction. Population 2 represents the latest iteration of their highly promising, lightweight crowd animation system designed specifically for Blender, catering to the demands of animation and visualization professionals.
This innovative add-on facilitates the rapid integration of background crowds into Blender scenes, augmenting the visual narrative and authenticity of projects. It is furnished with an extensive library of pre-designed 3D characters and animations, providing users with a rich palette of assets to populate their virtual worlds.
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The new release, Population 2, introduces several salient features. Notably, the Paint mode empowers users to directly "paint" crowd characters onto the scene canvas, streamlining the creative process and enhancing artistic control. Additionally, the Group and On Vertices modes offer novel distribution algorithms, enabling more realistic and uneven placement of characters across surfaces, thereby mimicking natural crowd formations with greater fidelity.
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| Population: A Pioneering Lightweight Solution for Blender Crowd Animation
Originally introduced last year, Population has swiftly established itself as a leading lightweight add-on for Blender, dedicated to crowd animation. Its intuitive design allows users to effortlessly incorporate animated crowds into their Blender scenes, whether by delineating walking paths or designating standing areas. The Stadium mode, in particular, is a standout feature, enabling the seamless addition of seated or standing crowds to stadium-centric visualizations, enhancing the realism of sporting and large-scale event simulations.
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The add-on is accompanied by a comprehensive collection of 48 meticulously photoscanned 3D characters and 55 diverse stock animations, courtesy of the renowned French mocap studio, SolidAnim. These animations span a wide spectrum of movements, including walking, running, sports-related gestures, and idle stances, providing a versatile repertoire for animators. The characters, predominantly featuring a white aesthetic as demonstrated in the demo videos, are equipped with high-resolution 8K PBR texture maps, along with a shader-based system that facilitates dynamic color variation in clothing, further enriching the visual customization options.
| Population 2: Innovations in Paint, Follow Curve, and Stadium Modes
Population 2 builds upon its predecessor's success by introducing a host of enhancements. The aforementioned Paint mode revolutionizes the way characters are added to the scene, offering a direct and tactile approach. In parallel, the revamped Follow Curve mode has been expanded to provide enhanced flexibility, permitting characters to traverse paths in both directions while also enabling precise adjustments to the path width, optimizing crowd movement dynamics.
Source: blendermarket.com
The Stadium mode has likewise undergone significant refinement, now affording users the ability to introduce empty seats within stadium crowds, adding an extra layer of authenticity to the scene. Moreover, crowd characters can be programmed to pivot and follow a designated "look-at" target, simulating the natural behavior of spectators during events, thereby elevating the overall visual and behavioral realism of the animated crowd within Blender scenes.
Source: blendermarket.com
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