People Going Places is a free Blender crowds add-on
CG artist and tools developer Jules Mabon – aka Ogjee – has released People Going Places, a free Blender crowds add-on.
The lightweight Geometry Nodes setup populates a ground mesh with low-poly animated characters to generate background crowds for animation or motion graphics work.
A quick way to add background crowds to Blender scenes
People Going Places provides a quick way to add animated crowds to the background of shots.
Users simply provide a ground mesh for the crowd characters to navigate, and select the areas on its surface in which they should walk, with the add-on filling them with movement paths.
It is possible to adjust the result using parameters to control the number of crowd characters, their movement speed, and the spacing and distribution of the paths.
For larger crowds, it is possible to bake the node graph to improve real-time performance.
Suited to less demanding shots
According to Mabon, “the model does not feature collisions between people and is shipped with low poly characters with simplistic animations, so it is mostly suited for distant crowds”.
We aren’t sure if it’s possible to get crowds to navigate uneven terrain: the demo shows only flat and angled surfaces, and the characters tend to slide when navigating ramps.
The add-on comes with “basic procedural characters”, but Mabon provides a paid pack of 32 textured low-poly animated characters as an add-on.
Price and system requirements
Procedural Crowds is compatible with Blender 4.2. The base add-on is a free download, while the pack of low-poly 3D characters costs €2.
Download People Going Places from the Ogjee Gumroad store
(Enter a figure of €0 to download the add-on for free, or add a voluntary tip)
Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.