page_title: Crowd simulation
section_title: Human-like behaviors and crowd AI
hierarchical_section_title: Crowd simulation / Human-like behaviors and crowd AI
caption_attribution_description: English: This is my crowd simulation of Covent Garden, London. It was created using Massive software for my specialist project in my second year. My main focus was on brain creation.
context_page_description: Crowd simulation is the process of simulating the movement of a large number of entities or characters. It is commonly used to create virtual scenes for visual media like films and video games, and is also used in crisis training, architecture and urban planning, and evacuation simulation.
  Crowd simulation may focus on aspects that target different applications. For realistic and fast rendering of a crowd for visual media or virtual cinematography, reduction of the complexity of the 3D scene and image-based rendering are used, while variations in appearance help present a realistic population.
  In games and applications intended to replicate real-life human crowd movement, like in evacuation simulations, simulated agents may need to navigate towards a goal, avoid collisions, and exhibit other human-like behavior. Many crowd steering algorithms have been developed to lead simulated crowds to their goals realistically. Some more general systems are researched that can support different kinds of agents, different levels of abstraction, agents interacting with smart objects, and more complex physical and social dynamics.
context_section_description: To simulate more aspects of human activities in a crowd, more is needed than path and motion planning. Complex social interactions, smart object manipulation, and hybrid models are challenges in this area. Simulated crowd behavior is inspired by the flow of real-world crowds. Behavioral patterns, movement speeds and densities, and anomalies are analyzed across many environments and building types. Individuals are tracked and their movements are documented such that algorithms can be derived and implemented into crowd simulations.
  Individual entities in a crowd are also called agents. In order for a crowd to behave realistically each agent should act autonomously (be capable of acting independently of the other agents). This idea is referred to as an agent-based model. Moreover, it is usually desired that the agents act with some degree of intelligence (i.e. the agents should not perform actions that would cause them to harm themselves). For agents to make intelligent and realistic decisions, they should act in accordance with their surrounding environment, react to its changes, and react to the other agents.
caption: A crowd simulation of Covent Garden square, London, showing a crowd of pedestrian agents reacting to a street performer
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