MARCHING ARMY TUTORIAL
Download the .zip file HERE with the scene and model.
(Each group(layer) is a different color)
It took ten minutes to create this army of 100 moving figures with only 2 morph targets. The simple steps are described below.
1. For a large crowd, only animate one hi-res character doing the basic movements, use instancing in Layout to duplicate the model into the front couple of rows and then offset their timing to add randomness. This is the most efficient way I know of in Lightwave to reproduce an animated character in groups.
2. The secondary characters can be a simple lo-res model with a couple of different morph targets to create their basic walk cycle.
3. Once the master character with morphs is complete, clone it into a large square 10x10 to make 100. You should now have a crowd that will move in perfect, albeit stiff, unison. If you want variation of movement, randomly seperate the cloned characters into different layers. When the bring them into layout, there will now be a number of different groups, depending on the number of layers you used in Modeler, which can now be morphed and animated independent of each other.
4. To make the crowd move forward, parent the character groups to a null and animate the Z translation with a linear curve to match the movement and positioning of the feet accordingly. For the up and down movement, either create inbetween morphs on the original model to move the figures up and down, or animate their Y translation in layout.
5. Slip the timing of each group's keyframes to allow them to move in slightly different movements from each other.
To make the whole crowd move more realistically, model a few inbetween morphs on the master low-res character and repeat steps 3-5.
Good Luck!