Hi All,

My crowd sim is progressing. I now have two agents, each in their own group, detecting and attacking one another. The next step is to add some attributes to indicate attack strength and health. I assume these would be additional attributes that I would add somewhere along the line.

Where is the best place to add these new attributes in a crowd sim?

The other problem I am having is that my attack animation which is basically an arm swatting does not collide with the mesh it is attempting to strike. It simply passes right through the opponent. Is this type of collision even possible in a crowd sim? Do I have to make every agent an RDB somehow? Any information on this is appreciated.

Also my two sluggos are attracted to the same goal and change state using the Particle Proximity trigger node. However, sometimes they are not even facing one another when they begin their attack animation. Is there a way to detect which particle/agent is closest and simply face that direction?

Thanks for your time

Enivob
The next step is to add some attributes to indicate attack strength and health. I assume these would be additional attributes that I would add somewhere along the line.

Where is the best place to add these new attributes in a crowd sim?

What about after the Crowd Source SOP before it gets into the simulation? Then it'll only be cooked once for the entire simulation.

The other problem I am having is that my attack animation which is basically an arm swatting does not collide with the mesh it is attempting to strike. It simply passes right through the opponent. Is this type of collision even possible in a crowd sim? Do I have to make every agent an RDB somehow? Any information on this is appreciated.

That's an interesting question. In H15, RBD support for agents was added but I'm not sure it will allow for such situations. I one can probably cheat these for background crowd scenes by designating one of them as the “winner” and the other as the “loser” when they interact. Then the “loser” plays back some pre-canned animation. And if you have close ups, one might want to do some hero animation anyways.

Also my two sluggos are attracted to the same goal and change state using the Particle Proximity trigger node. However, sometimes they are not even facing one another when they begin their attack animation. Is there a way to detect which particle/agent is closest and simply face that direction?

Have you tried turning on use Field of View? That should at least get them to not trigger the attack state until they face each other.

That should at least get them to not trigger the attack state until they face each other.

But I thought all states were essentially made up? What would link the crowd solver decisions to attack to a given state? Say I don't have an attack state, I named my attack state ATARI instead. If the solver were going to leverage FOV for attack you would have to specify the attack state name in some field, right? Is that field in the Crowd Solver somewhere? Or is it in Crowd Source?

That would be in the transition node (that has the trigger node as an input). The trigger node just says whether a condition is true. The transition node says if the trigger is true, and the agent is in the Input State, then change the agent to the Output State.

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini14.0/crowds/triggers [sidefx.com]
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini14.0/nodes/dop/crowdtransition [sidefx.com]