Procedural Crowds is an intuitive Blender add-on available on the Super Hive Market (formerly Blender Market) designed to automate the creation of digital crowds. It streamlines the process of populating scenes with people who can perform various actions, such as standing, cheering, walking. It is a useful tool for artists working on environments like concerts, sports events, or busy city streets.
Procedural Crowds is my top recommendation in the “Crowds” category. It is feature-rich and at the same time highly affordable.
Crowd Types
The add-on offers several distinct crowd types to fit different scene requirements:
- Audience and Circle: These types create people standing in defined areas or circular patterns, perfect for spectators. They include "idling" or "cheering" animations and a Point of Interest feature that directs the crowd to look at a specific object.
- Follow Path and March: Users can draw curves (Bezier paths) to guide crowds. The "Follow Path" option is ideal for general pedestrian movement, while the "March" option organizes people into rows and columns, which is highly effective for creating armies.
- Random Walk: Unlike other types based on Geometry Nodes, this uses a particle-based system. It allows people to walk randomly within an area, bounce off collision obstacles, and move toward a specific "goal" object.
- Stadium: This specialized type populates sloped surfaces or stair meshes with people, making it easy to fill stadium seating.
Intuitive Controls and Customization
The tool is designed for ease of use through its panel in the Blender sidebar. You can tweak settings such as crowd width, depth, and "personal space" to control density. Additionally, a "floor" can be defined which allows the crowd to conform to any ground object.
While the add-on provides a set of default humans, it also supports custom models. To successfully integrate your own characters:
- Rigging and Meshes: Characters should consist of a single mesh and have their rotation and scale applied to avoid animation glitches.
- Animation Looping: Animations must be set to cycle indefinitely; otherwise, characters may stop moving or start sliding after one cycle.
- In-Place Movement: For walking or running, animations must be animated in place rather than moving forward in 3D space.
The custom human workflow is covered in more details in the video below.
Additional Model packs
The addon developer also offers an additional model packs that work seamlessly with the addon:
