Authoring Virtual Crowds: A Survey

Recent advancements in crowd simulation unravel a wide range of functionalities for virtual agents, delivering highly-realistic, natural crowds. Such systems are particular importance to variety applications fields such as: entertainment (e.g., movies, computer games); architectural and urban planning; simulations sports training. However, providing their capabilities untrained users necessitates the development authoring frameworks. Authoring crowds is complex multi-level task, varying from assuming control assisting realise creative intents, intuitive easy use interfaces, facilitating control. In this paper, we present categorisation authorable components, ranging high-level behaviours path-planning local movements, as well animation visualisation. We provide review most relevant methods each area, emphasising amount nature influence that have over final result. Moreover, discuss currently available tools graphical user drag-and-drop), identifying trends early recent work. Finally, suggest promising directions future research mainly stem rise learning-based methods, need unified framework.