OverCrowd is a powerful crowd-simulation plugin designed exclusively for Unreal Engine 5, enabling creators to effortlessly populate scenes with thousands of animated modular characters. Perfect for filmmakers, animators, and game developers, OverCrowd provides an intuitive and efficient solution for generating dynamic, realistic crowds without needing expensive third-party software. By leveraging the incredible power of Niagara and Vertex Animation Textures (VATs), Overcrowd renders thousands of characters with a minimal performance footprint, giving you the epic scale your project deserves.

Key Features:

• Wardrobe Editor: Easily organize modular wardrobes, body parts, and baked animations directly within Unreal Engine. Supports popular asset packs such as Polyphoria’s medieval armor and MetaHumans.
• Vertex Animation Textures (VATs): Automatically converts modular characters into highly performant VAT characters, enabling massive crowds without compromising visual quality or performance.
• Static Population Boxes: Instantly populate stadiums, battlefields, or cityscapes with detailed animated characters. Includes the ability to spawn thousands of paired animations for realistic interactions, such as sword duels.
• Niagara Integration: Utilize Niagara particles for large-scale crowd behaviors, including spline-following paths and neighbor grid integration to manage collisions and prevent character overlap.
• Dynamic LOD Generation: Automatically generates optimized Levels of Detail, facilitating seamless cinematic camera movements from expansive wide shots down to detailed close-ups.

   

Upcoming Features:

• Dynamic Character Swapping: Seamlessly transition between VATs, blueprint actors, or skeletal meshes for interactive, detailed character encounters.
• Advanced Niagara Behaviors: Enhanced crowd AI and collision mechanics for immersive, realistic battle simulations, inspired by systems like those found in Total War games or Peter Jackson’s Massive software from The Lord of the Rings.

Professional price includes 1 to 1 support and priority feature requests, and is priced to reflect the massive time-savings and value to studio teams

Promo Video

• Convert any skeletal mesh into a Vertex Animated Instance Static Mesh (VANISM)
• Niagara compatible
• Metahuman compatible with independent (from body) facial animation on VANISMs
• Metahumans as Niagara particles
• Instantly swap VANISMs to Actor (Pawn, Character etc) for more detailed interaction
• Easily blend animations on large sections of the crowd with Animation Modifiers (Volumes)
• Masking tools for any geometry clipping issues
• Much more….

   

Documentation Link: YouTube Tutorials

Example Packaged Game: OverCrowd_Showcase

Support and Contact

Discord: discord.gg/thedarkestage

Email: [email protected]