Hothifa Smair, known for iCity and iCars, has released iCrowds — a full-featured crowd simulation system for Blender 4.5 and newer. The add-on targets film, games, architectural visualisation, and urban design, offering seven integrated systems for both static placement and dynamic movement of thousands of autonomous agents.
Seven Systems for Every Scenario
iCrowds divides its toolkit into static and dynamic subsystems.
The static systems provide surface, curve, vertex, and structured venue distribution.
The dynamic systems introduce motion, pathfinding, and crowd intelligence.
The core modules are:
- On Ground System: Scatters agents across terrain surfaces using vertex group masking, density gradients, and natural variation noise. Supports both single agents and cluster formations.
- On Curve System: Generates linear distributions along user-defined paths with width control, automatic orientation, and curve radius–based density scaling.
- On Vertex System: Enables precision placement on mesh vertices for architectural and design layouts, supporting weight painting and group-based patterning.
- Stadium System: Builds structured seating or audience arrangements, with grid controls for rows and columns, and alignment parameters for rotation and orientation.
- Walkers System: Simulates organised pedestrian flows along curves with bidirectional traffic, lane control, and personal-space handling.
- Fluid System: Adds real-time dynamic behaviour with physics-based attraction, repulsion, and path following. Agents react to scene elements and adjustable flow fields, suitable for events or evacuation simulations.
- City System: A full urban AI layer inspired by games like The Sims. Agents respond to internal needs—hunger, rest, fun, or bladder—and navigate to context-appropriate locations (restaurants, homes, toilets). Debug tools permit real-time inspection of individual agent states.
Performance and Scalability
The developer states that iCrowds supports up to 100,000 agents, depending on hardware and scene complexity. It includes LOD (Level of Detail) options for real-time performance, and baking tools to commit simulations for render-heavy scenes. The add-on uses efficient memory management for scaling from architectural previews to large film visualisations.
Characters and Customisation
The package provides 10 human base models in high- and low-poly variants, available in multiple outfits. Clothing options include formal, casual, and accessory combinations such as hats and glasses. Each model can be randomised for diversity in background and mid-distance crowd shots.
Workflow and Pipeline Integration
iCrowds fits into Blender’s standard workflow:
- Artists select a static distribution system.
- Density and masking are refined via vertex groups or curves.
- Static layouts are imported into dynamic systems such as Fluid or City for movement simulation.
- Final adjustments include variation, physics tuning, and performance baking.
Systems can be mixed for specific production needs:
Urban environments benefit from combining City and Fluid systems; structured events can merge Walkers and Stadium; architectural projects may pair On Vertex with Fluid.
Use Cases Across Industries
The toolset is aimed at multidisciplinary users:
- Architecture & Visualisation: Quickly populate renders, simulate building capacity, and contextualise scenes with human scale.
- Game Development: Populate open worlds, generate background NPCs, and run behavioural simulations for day/night cycles.
- Film & Animation: Animate large background crowds and pre-visualise crowd movement in sequences.
- Urban Planning: Test pedestrian flow, space usage, and crowd density during design studies.
Price and Availability
iCrowds is available for $19 per licence on Superhive Market. The add-on supports Blender 4.5 and above on all major operating systems.
Stability Reminder
While iCrowds appears production-ready and technically mature, artists should verify performance and reliability in their own pipelines before integrating it into ongoing projects. Stability, agent count limits, and render compatibility may vary by system configuration.
