Houdini Resources

Updated on June 26  2024


Houdini Crowds

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)
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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)
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3. Select Collision Layer and then Configure Joint from the crowds shelf tool for later use
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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

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6. A crowdsource node was created – if you play this, they walk in place

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7. With the crowdsource selected click simulate

With mocap2, walk it all works out of the box since it is the default action.