ABSTRACT
For much academic research as well as industrial applications, the goal of crowd simulation is to be maximally predictive. In film, and other narrative media, this is not even a secondary criteria: a crowd simulation is judged successful to the extent it is believable to the viewer, and directable by the creator. High levels of believability (I will not say realism-this author works more often with talking animals than humans) is the baseline standard for professional work, but ultimately, the crowd simulation must serve a specific story point. That is where directability comes in; a crowd simulation for film must be amenable to nuanced crafting to match a director’s vision. This can often be in direct contradiction to believability, which is where the skill of the crowd artists and the features of the simulator are put to the test. These skills and features will be the focus of this chapter.
