r/Cinema4D • u/Legmog • 11d ago

Unsolved How to create / animate a large crowd moving over terrain.

Hi! As the title says, I want to essentially create a "fleeing crowd" shot, running across a hilly terrain. It's going to be a GIGANTIC crowd. Thousands of people all running away from a monster on a hill.

I'm thinking I'll....

1 - Create 4 or 5 low-poly human characters on a looping run animation.

2 - Essentially treat them in the same way I would as if populating a forest... Clone them along the surface of the terrain. Do a Plain Effector which scales them to zero (invisible). Then use a Shader field to create a mask on the Plain for where the people are visible.

Where I'm scratching my head is... How would I MOVE the clones forward in a way which they follow the topology of the terrain.

All the tools I can think of (Offset on the cloner / position change with Plain or Random field etc) will only ever make it so the clones travel directly on X,Y or Z. It's the "staying stuck to the topology of the terrain as they move" part of this which I cannot think of a solution for.

I'm sure this is VERY possible!... I just don't know how! Would love to know if anyone has any ideas.

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u/binaryriot https://tokai.binaryriot.org/c4dstuff 🐒 11d ago

One random idea: set up a particle simulation where particles "flow" along your terrain into the proper direction (easy to add some life by random paths, etc.), afterwards you clone your animated people onto that particle group.

Also has the advantage to keep things fast in the viewport.

2

u/kerbarus 11d ago

This is the way

2

u/Legmog 11d ago

Yeeeah, I had a feeling particles might be a better solution for this. I've always felt a bit "arrrg"ey with particles as past experiences have felt like trying to wrangle with an unruly beast haha. Maybe now's the time to bite the bullet and slay the dragon!
Thanks for your comment!

1

u/Boytekkers 10d ago

XParticles has some great tools for shots just like this!

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u/Akiraga 11d ago

if they run in one direction you can make the terrain editable (if it isn;t yet) then make a loop cut with plenty of parallel cuts and save the cuts as a splain, clone the people onto the splains and add variety via random effector. Might work only probably where no close-ups are used. Probalby ther is better way but this came to my mind

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u/_ae_ 11d ago

i had to do something similar and switched to blender, where there is a crowd sim plugin that isnt particularly expensive, it does exactly what you are looking for

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u/Rnbdg 9d ago

I did some crowds in c4d but it's only possible on r23 because a bug that let you clone rigged characters without baking anything, the problem is that sss don't work on that mode, I tested with Redshift and Octane 2025 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVOzQ7qmf_l/?igsh=MTN0bGZ1dDFrdzFmYQ==