Sketch-Based Crowd Modelling

Guan, L., and Wuensche, B. C.

The creation of complex virtual worlds has expanded from the domain of designers and animators to that of general users with no background in computer graphics. Example applications are military simulations, urban planning, landscape design, search and rescue simulations, and social media technologies such as “Second Life”. In many cases the user wants to create content containing hundreds or thousands of similar objects. Modelling and placing each individual object is infeasible and new ways must be found to allow users to easily specify the distribution of a large number of objects. In this paper we introduce a sketch-based approach for crowd modelling, which is intuitive and suitable for different input devices such as mice, sketch pads, and touch screens (Windows 7). We derive design requirements by analysing real environments and by testing users’ abilities to characterise crowds and collections/accumulations of objects. Based on these requirements we formulate a model-by-example approach in which users sketch a sample distribution of objects and our tool computes the complete “population” of objects over a domain specified with a sketched contour. In order to deal with different distribution patterns we first characterise the input and then use clustering and texture synthesis to replicate the characteristics over the domain. Initial results demonstrate that the tool gives plausible results for random, regular and clustered input and that it can be used in a wide variety of modelling applications.

Cite as: Guan, L., and Wuensche, B. C. (2011). Sketch-Based Crowd Modelling. In Proc. Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC 2011) Perth, Australia. CRPIT, 117. Christof Lutteroth and Haifeng Shen Eds., ACS. 67-76

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