An interactive authoring and simulation system for large-scale artistic performances

In this paper, we introduce an interactive VR system for authoring and simulating the crowd scenes in the large-scale artistic performances. The system consists of a crowd authoring tool and a distributed crowd rendering system. The crowd authoring tool allows the users to generate complex crowd scenes by direct manipulation of virtual crowds and by semantic interactions, with a WYSIWYG graphics user interface. The authoring results can be saved as XML script, and be reused to examine the design of the performances. The distributed crowd rendering system renders the designed crowd scenes at interactive frame rate and high resolution. The presented system is proved to be an intuitive and efficient tool for the directors of the artistic performances.