Monday, March 23, 2015 - 15:15

In addition to an improved animation system, Golaem Crowd 4.0 enables to create more sophisticated shots and to populate scenes even faster by providing artists full control over the simulation. 

 
 
Golaem Crowd is being used by more than hundred vfx studios worldwide. The newest releases include Dracula Untold (Framestore), Hercules (Milk VFX, Cinesite), 22 Jump Street (Pixel Magic)... Golaem Crowd helped them ramp up on crowds and deliver great projects quickly.
 
Golaem Crowd 4 provides more advanced features with the same ease of use and facilitates the interaction of the crowd simulation with other elements in the shot: open access to simulation data, curve driven simulation, simulation cache scrubbing and editing… Artists can now take dailies requests into account immediately, without going back to the simulation, and get their shots validated in no time.

Thanks to Golaem Crowd’s ease of use, artists from different disciplines such as layouts, environments and animation could be trained up very quickly and be running shots within a week or two

Ben  Lambert, CG supervisor at Framestore


Iterate Faster On Your Shots

Golaem Crowd artists benefit from instant previsualization of crowds geometry in the Maya viewport. Previsualization now even includes advanced animation like blend shapes and cloth simulation. The result is close enough to the final render for studios to validate the crowd simulation with playblasts before rendering. 
 
The simulation can now be debugged by activating the Visual Feedback to check which behaviors or motions are running and display debug information in the viewport.
 
Golaem Crowd 4.0 allows artists to cache the simulation for Interactive Replay and Timeline Scrubbing, facilitating work and validation steps. When small retakes are needed, they will enjoy the new simulation cache editing functionalities: cached characters can now be selected and directly moved, removed from simulation or imported for manual keyframe editing.
 


Create More Sophisticated Shots

The new Channels System gives access to a character internal states, to get information such as its type, the current Motion Clip, bones positions, orientation, color... These can be used to trigger behaviors or feed custom written scripts.
 
A nCloth based Cloth Simulation behavior has been added, enabling artists to benefit from advanced cloth simulation for close-up shots. 
 
Last but not least, the Synchronized Motion Behavior enables artists to precisely control the occurrence of an animation by placing locators in the scene. It facilitates precise interactions like climbing ladders, triggering jumps, or synchronized close combat.


Animate Smarter

Golaem Crowd 4.0 introduces new ways to get a more realistic and varied crowd at nearly no additional animation cost.
 
The new SetBone Behavior allows to modify the orientation of any bone with a fixed value, a noise function or any other expression. It is an efficient way to add noise when input motions are too static or even to design procedural motions without any motion capture input.
 
Golaem Crowd 4.0 also integrates Animation Layers, which enable to extract a pose (e.g. clasped hand) or secondary animation (e.g. breathing) from an existing motion, and add it on top of other motions. It is possible to add any number of additional motions and randomize them individually to create an infinity of new animations.
 
Golaem Crowd 4.0 animation engine now supports Squash & Stretch and benefits from a new ground adaptation system, more precise, and even able to adapt characters feet on other characters lying on the ground.
 

 

Extended Compatibility & Alembic Export

Golaem Crowd has been updated to support the latest releases of major renderers (V-Ray, Arnold, Renderman Studio, Mental Ray, 3Delight) and still offer compatibility with previous versions.The Golaem Crowd Arnold procedural plugin for Arnold can also be used in SoftImage and Katana.
 
On top of the existing FBX export, Golaem Crowd for Maya 2015 can now export Alembic Geometry Cache including shaders name information and user attributes. 
 
Golaem Crowd is compatible with any Maya version from 2012 to 2015 (Windows or Linux, 64 bit). 
 
Learn more:
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - 16:29
Framestore will be giving at talk at Paris Images Digital Summit on Thursday 22nd at 5:15pm covering how Dracula Untold huge battle scenes were brought to life using Golaem Crowd.

The Golaem team will be attending the summit, ready to answer your questions about how Golaem can help bring life to your productions.

If you are still a student, ask us why Golaem is the right choice for kickstarting a student carrer, we will be happy to explain how you can find a job in crowds!

Learn more on Paris Images Digital Summit

Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - 17:35
We are very happy to announce that the new fxphd term includes a course about Golaem Crowd! Listen to Gareth Stevenson, 3D Generalist at Union VFX, and learn everything you need to create great crowd effects!

Gareth will detail every parts of the Golaem Crowd workflow: how to easily populate your scenes, create behaviors to animate any type of characters, use your own assets, render... Gareth has used Golaem Crowd for many projects, in different situations (city, audience...), and we are very happy that he now has the opportunity to share his experience with all of you.

As you probably know, fxphd is an online vfx, production, post-production training program led by professionals. It offers both application and craft-based courses, online forums for feedback, and vpn software.

Icing on the cake, fxphd offer an enrollment certificate code for people completing a course. Do not hesitate to share your Golaem Crowd projects and your certification number so that we can promote your profile in the new jobs section we are working on!

Learn more in the term overview video (Golaem Crowd part from 7:40), or on the fxphd courses page

Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - 17:04
Murphy, a final year project featuring a kind creature and a final shot using Golaem Crowd, has been featured on many websites and selected for the VIEWFest at the VIEW conference. Congratulations to the creators!

Enjoy the movie below as well as a breakdown and behind the scenes video.

Learn More:

 

 

Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 03:00
The Golaem Team will be attending the BFX Festival in Bournemouth this coming friday/saturday. Do not hesitate to drop by our booth, and do not miss our tech talk showcasing recent productions on Sat. 27th 2:40pm.

Golaem Crowd Tech Talk: Artist Friendly Crowd Simulation

Creating visually compelling and believable crowds can be a daunting challenge, especially when budgets are shrinking and timescales are getting shorter. It is not only important to represent the crowd behavior as a whole, but aspects and motions of each individual must be believable.

Developed and tested under real production conditions, Golaem Crowd makes it easy and affordable  to populate worlds with directable digital characters, from a few to thousands, directly in Autodesk Maya.

From crushed legionnaires to hordes of zombies through huge stadium audiences, Golaem will presents a selection of the best productions it has been used for together with an overview of the complete Golaem Crowd production workflow.

Golaem is very excited to be part of BFX this year! Contact us if you want to setup an appointment there.

BFX was designed to showcase the visual effects and animation industry but more importantly showcase the wave of fresh talent around the UK as well as educate and inspire the next generation. BFX launched in November 2012 to overwhelming support from industry and subsequently has some incredible partners on board, including; Double Negative, Framestore, Moving Picture Company, The Mill, Cinesite, Creative Skillset and BAFTA.

 

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