Maryland Lottery Deconstructed :: Part 3 :: Populating the Stadium

ICE tree for bespoke crowd duplication program

To populate the stadium with 80,000 screaming fans, SMNY's R&D team wrote a bespoke program in XSI based on particle systems.  Replacing the particles with the pre-shot green screen footage, the team's program provided for randomized placement of the various fans as well as  for randomized playback of the clips to allow for variation in the stands (see image right).

50 particles in <1 second / 500 particles in approx 1 second / 40,000 particles in approx 4 seconds

This flexible system allows for crowd duplication across any piece of geometry.  Fast as well as flexible, the particle-based system program generates 40,000 "fans" in less than 84seconds.

the turquoise patches tell the program where to fill the geometry with particles

To control the placement and concentration of the fans, the team incorporated into the program the ability to paint on the geometry to direct the particles on where to populate.  Rendering the entire scene to portray a realistic but stylized look that heavily incorporated the Baltimore Ravens colors (purple & gold) yielded the final result:

Maryland Lottery Deconstructed :: Part 2 :: Creating the Fans

The next step for the S&M CG team was to create the fans with which to fill newly modeled and textured stadium. To do this, S&M's TD directed a green screen shoot at Smoke & Mirrors where he captured several S&M employees acting as crazed fans.  

green screen shoot

With several clips of cheering fans, the footage was brought into Flame to key out the green screen.  

keying out the green

With several clips of crazy fans, the R&D team's next challenge was to develop a method of populating the stadium model with them.  To find out how the CG team progressed from green screen to packed stadium, check back on Wednesday September 8.