8

Biped Crowds 1027
or any other undesirable change that occurs during
atransition. See
Customizing Transitions (page
2–885)
.
After solving the biped crowd simulation the first
few times, check again for bad transitions you
mighthavemissedthefirsttimearound.Aftera
few simulations, most likely you will have found all
or nearly all the bad transitions.
Restrictions
Some features of the crowd system are not
designed to work with biped crowds. These
behaviors and parameters have no effect on the
crowd’s movements when bipeds are used with the
simulation.
•Vectorfields
• The Look Ahead parameter in the Avoid
behavior
Pr ocedur es: Usi ng B ipeds i n a Cr owd
Simulation
The follow ing sequence of procedures gives the
basic steps for creating and sav ing a motion flow
graph, assigning several bipeds to delegates, and
then sharing the motion flow graph among the
bipeds so that the sof tware automatically creates
separate motion flow scripts for each biped, based
on the behaviors assigned to its delegate.
Note: These procedures assume you know how
to animate bipeds with footsteps and keyf rame
methods, and save the animations as BIP files. To
prepare for using Shared Motion Flow, you should
createandsavearangeofbipedmotionssuchas
start,walk,turnright,turnleft,stop,andwait.See
Loading and Saving BIP Animation (page 2–774) .
The first step is to create an appropriate motion
flow g raph and save it to disk.
To create the sha red motion flow:
1.
Addabiped,andthenopentheMotion
panel.
2. Click the Biped rollout > Motion
Flow Mode button.
3. Click the Mot ion Flow rollout > Show
Graph button.
4. In the Motion Flow Grap
htoolbar,click
theCreateMultipleClipsbutton.
This displays an Open dialog that lets you
select any number of BIP fi les from the same
directory to add sim
ultaneously to the motion
flow g raph. Use Click+SHIFT+click to choose
several contiguous files, and CTRL+click to
choose non-contig
uous files.
5. Cho ose the BIP files
you want the software to
use for motion synthesis, and then click the OK
button.
The files are added to the graph as clips. Each
clip is automatic
ally named after the file from
which it’s derived.
Note: For best results, especial ly with
simulationsinwhichbipedsaretoturnat
different angle
s, use as many different tur ning
clips a s possible. A minimal setup would
include sep arate left-turn and right-turn walks
at angles of 45,
90, 135, and 180 degrees.
The next step is
to add transitions among the
clips so character studio knows which actions
can proceed to and from other actions. You
can do this ma
nually for greater control, but
for initial testing , you can save time by letting
thesoftwareaddandoptimizetransitions
automatica
lly.
6. Click the Sy nthesize Motion Flow Graph
button. This uses the first 30 percent and