Softimage Blog

You need a crowd of a few thousand people doing the kind of stuff crowds do, yet you only have ten models. This is how you get them to behave!

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The Piccolo language has this neat little function called AddPropertyTable which you can call on pretty much any object. This attaches a table of userdefined properties on the object that you can then fill with whatever you wish. This table of course goes whereever the object goes and is accessible through dot notation.

I use this profusely, especially with my actors. This way I can tack on actor characteristics (i.e.: agression level, strength, sight distance, etc) and refer to these characteristics later in the code.

I’m currently winding down on this Behavior project that has been making me loose sleep. I’m at the stage where I need to create my data for my multiple render passes….
Warning: If you’ve never used Behavior before or don’t care for crowd sim, skip this one. If you care for a stupid Behavior trick… Read [...]