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:

1. Artists select a static distribution system.
2. Density and masking are refined via vertex groups or curves.
3. Static layouts are imported into dynamic systems such as Fluid or City for movement simulation.
4. 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.

The post City Life for Crowds: iCrowds Lands in Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Esri has released CityEngine 2025.0 and added a long-requested feature for technical artists, urbanists, and VFX supervisors: the Street Designer. Finally, precise lane-by-lane city sculpting, directly in the viewport, no extra plugins, no custom code required (unless you want it).

The new Street Designer enables per-lane editing—vehicle, parking, bike, sidewalk, buffer, vegetation, and public transport—each with procedural markings, furnishings, and foliage. Street cross-sections can be built or tweaked interactively, with custom configurations saved and reused. The default Esri.lib now ships with a “Generic_Street_Configurations.cej” demo scene plus preset lane templates, so no more wild west sidewalk hacks or guessing how a European avenue should look in CG.

For developers and TDs, a Python API exposes lane and segment functions (CE.addLane, CE.moveLane, CE.createStreetConfiguration, among others) for procedural street control, batch setup, and automated asset prep. CGA rule support gets expanded for referencing and managing these new lane types.

Visual CGA Editor: Node Clarity at Last

The Visual CGA Editor, CityEngine’s node-based, non-linear rule editing environment, receives overdue ergonomic upgrades. There’s a new “Find Node” dialog, cleaned-up slot visuals, clear annotation widgets, and actual lock indicators for read-only files. Node connections are visually decluttered. Compilation speed in heavy graphs gets a measurable boost. The editor now supports right-mouse panning—a small tweak that will save cumulative hours and wrists across projects.

Procedural Scripting and Geometry: More Boolean, Less Crash

The CGA language itself gains streamlined 3D Boolean syntax, automatic tagging of intersections, and better sequential programming with improved inline rules and comp splits. Numeric stability gets a tune-up: cleaner handling of non-planar geometry, reduced split errors, and a fix for convexify crashers. These improvements matter in heavy production pipelines where edge-case geometry was, until now, a daily headache.

Viewport and UI: Shadows, Snapshots, and Usability Polish

Default anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are now switched on, cleaning up texture edges and lines out of the box. Shadow rendering for snapshots improves—useful for dailies and quick looks. Snapshot resolution is capped at 10,000 × 10,000 pixels, which should keep both marketing and pipeline artists happy. Material assignment is now instant with a double-click in the Material Browser, and numeric input is more strictly validated across tools. Copy-on-move via Ctrl-drag and new toolbar icons also feature, but won’t disrupt muscle memory. Dark mode dashboard alignment and usability tweaks round out the UI changes—nothing flashy, but a collection of workflow splinters removed.

File I/O and SDK: Industry Standard, Now With TGA

CityEngine 2025.0 brings fixes and updates for USD, FBX, and Collada import/export, finally squashing some persistent opacity bugs. TGA file support is added. Under the hood, third-party libraries (ArcGIS Maps SDK, Chromium, FileGDB, OpenUSD, OpenDesign SDK for IFC/DWG, libpng, libtiff) have been updated, ensuring compliance and futureproofing.

DCC integration is unchanged: export supports OBJ, DXF, FBX, Alembic, and USD, keeping CityEngine interoperable with Houdini, Maya, Max, C4D, Blender, Unreal Engine 5, and similar tools.

Platform Support and System Requirements

The software now supports 64-bit Windows 10+, Windows Server 2016+, RHEL/AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux 8+, and adds official support for Windows Server 2025. No word on major macOS support changes—see the documentation for current OS specifics.

Licensing: Perpetual is Dead, Long Live Rental

With this release, Esri ends perpetual licensing for CityEngine. From June 2025 onward, only subscription access via ArcGIS Professional ($2,200/year) or Professional Plus ($4,200/year) is available. Existing annual license users must migrate; no grandfathering or extensions for perpetuals. This is now rental software—plan your budgets accordingly.

Test First, Deploy Later

As with all major tool updates, users should test new workflows and features on staging assets before pushing CityEngine 2025.0 into live production pipelines. The Street Designer is powerful, but trust—never rely—on the demo scene alone.

CityEngine 2025.0 Release Notes

CityEngine company homepage // Esri CityEngine

The post CityEngine 2025.0: Street Designer Arrives, Perpetual Licensing Leaves first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The CityEngine User Meeting 2025 (CEUM) is now open for registration. The annual event, focused on 3D environments, procedural modeling, and urban planning, takes place online on April 16, 2025, from 5–8 pm CEST (8–11 am PDT / 11 am–2 pm EDT). Participants can expect a mix of presentations, discussions, and insights from professionals in the field.

Call for Speakers

Got expertise in CityEngine and procedural 3D environments? The CEUM team is looking for speakers to share their knowledge with the community. Interested presenters can reach out via the official event page: www.3d-env.tech.

Join the 3D Environment Community

CEUM 2025 is an opportunity to connect with other CityEngine users, discuss workflows, and explore the latest in procedural modeling and urban design. Whether you’re a longtime user or just getting started, the event provides valuable insights into the tool’s applications in VFX, game development, and architecture.

The post CityEngine User Meeting 2025: Registration Open for CEUM first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.