Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

See Fabric Engine’s Horde do real-time crowd sims

http://vimeo.com/61358674
Fabric Engine’s video overview of Horde, its new real-time crowd system, created using its Creation platform. The developer has just posted new videos showing how Horde integrates with Maya and Softimage.

Fabric Engine has posted some interesting new videos showing integration between Horde, its work-in-progress real-time crowd system, and Maya and Softimage.

Horde is being developed using Creation, Fabric Engine’s framework for building high-performance tools for previz and visual effects work, and will be released as a module for the platform.

Effectively, it functions both as a worked example for TDs who want to get to grips with Creation, and a standalone solution for studios that just need a crowd solution.

Complex simulations, real-time control
The overview video above gives a flavour of what Horde can do: check out the footage towards the end that shows a user painting onto terrain to direct the movement of crowd actors in real time.

The new videos show the workflow for using Horde inside Maya and Softimage in detail, and how the software’s support for Alembic can be used to move large data sets between applications.

Horde is currently in closed testing, but studios are being actively encouraged to join the beta program.

Fabric Engine is also currently developing three other modules: scene assembly tool Stage, vegetation generator Flora and online streaming system Orb.

Read more about Horde on the Fabric Engine website

Watch videos showing integration between Horde and Maya

Watch a video showing integration between Horde and Softimage