Golaem has released Golaem Crowd 4.0, crowd simulation software for Maya that is being used by more than 100 VFX studios worldwide.
Golaem Crowd 4 provides more advanced features with the same ease of use and facilitates the interaction of the crowd simulation with other elements in the shot than the earlier version: open access to simulation data, curve driven simulation, simulation cache scrubbing and editing. Artists can now take dailies requests into account immediately, without going back to the simulation, and get their shots validated in no time.
A Golaem Crowd 4 demo video can be seen at: https://vimeo.com/golaem/crowd4
Golaem Crowd artists benefit from instant previsualization of crowd geometry in the Maya viewport. Previsualization now includes advanced animation like blendshapes and cloth simulation. The result is close enough to the final render for studios to validate the crowd simulation with playblasts before rendering.
The simulation can now be debugged by activating Visual Feedbackto check which behaviors or motions are running and display debug information in the viewport.
Golaem Crowd 4.0 allows artists to cache the simulation for Interactive Replay and Timeline Scrubbing, facilitating work and validation steps. When small retakes are needed, they can use the new simulation cache editing functionalities: cached characters can now be selected and directly moved, removed from simulation or imported for manual keyframe editing.