Optimizing Large Scale Crowds in Ralph Breaks the Internet

The large scale of the internet required the Crowds department toanimate characters and vehicles at a wide range of visible depths,from front-and-center to as far back as set extension. However, ourcurrent pipeline was not built to support the large number of setelements requiring crowd characters. Our new approach was tobreak up the scene per set element, procedurally overfill it usingcharacter formulas for distribution, movement and interactions,followed by a cull and optimization pass.