Crowd Simulation

Research into the methods and techniques used in simulating crowds is now reaching maturity, but until now there is no book that focuses on this important topic. Prior approaches have been application-specific focusing on different aspects of collective behaviour and using different modelling techniques. Thalmann and Musse have identified two broader areas of crowd simulations, firstly focusing on the realism of behavioural aspects and secondly looking at how to achieve high quality visualisation. The study of crowds is complex with issues such as collision avoidance problems relating to large numbers of individuals; motion planning, trajectories and so forth. Depending on the application of crowds, other requirements such as real-time simulations are needed to populate virtual environments in VR systems. In order to provide a tool to simulate behavioural aspects of a crowd, social conventions of inter-relationships are needed. Crowd requirements and potential strategies are discussed in this book and topics covered include population modelling, virtual human animation and computer vision techniques that are focused on crowd control and crowd rendering Research into the methods and techniques used in simulating crowds has developed extensively within the last few years, particularly in the areas of video games and film. Despite recent impressive results when simulating and rendering thousands of individuals, many challenges still exist in this area. The comparison of simulation with reality, the realistic appearance of virtual humans and their behavior, group structure and their motion, and collision avoidance are just some examples of these challenges. For most of the applications of crowds, it is now a requirement to have real-time simulations – which is an additional challenge, particularly when crowds are very large. Crowd Simulation analyses these challenges in depth and suggests many possible solutions. Daniel Thalmann and Soraia Musse share their experiences and expertise in the application of: Population modeling Virtual human animation Behavioral models for crowds The connection between virtual and real crowds Path planning and navigation Visual attention models Geometric and populated semantic environments Crowd rendering The second edition presents techniques and methods developed since the authors first covered the simulation of crowds in 2007. Crowd Simulation includes in-depth discussions on the techniques of path planning, including a new hybrid approach between navigation graphs and potential-based methods. The importance of gaze attention – individuals appearing conscious of their environment and of others – is introduced, and a free-of-collision method for crowds is also discussed. "Research into the methods and techniques used in simulating crowds is now reaching maturity, but until now there is no book that focuses on this important topic." "Prior approaches have been application specific focusing on different aspects of collective behaviour and using different modelling techniques. Thalmann and Musse have identified two broader areas of crowd simulations, firstly focusing on the realism of behavioural aspects and secondly looking at how to achieve high quality visualisation." "The study of crowds is complex with issues such as collision avoidance problems relating to large numbers of individuals; motion planning, trajectories and so forth. Depending on the application of crowds, other requirements such as real-time simulations are needed to populate virtual environments in VR systems. In order to provide a tool to simulate behavioural aspects of a crowd, social conventions of inter-relationships are needed."--BOOK JACKET Recent times have seen growing interest in crowd simulation, particularly in the commercial sector where it is used in the fields of security, defence, entertainment and the movie industry. This book focuses closely on methods and techniques for crowd simulation, filling the gap in the professional literature. The topics covered in this comprehensive survey include Modelling of Populations; Virtual Human Animation; Behavioural Animation of Crowds; Crowd Rendering and Populated Environments.