“Zerg rush hour: simulating swarms for StarCraft 2 cinematics” by Cordner and LaBarge

In Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm’s introductory cinematic, tens of thousands of alien creatures known as the Zerg descend upon and infest a human city. To animate them all, a procedural particle-based crowd system was created to simulate their movement and behavior. Artist-friendly controls direct the swarm to move, attack, climb, and leap using volume primitives in a lightweight implementation, providing fast turnaround for modifying and executing new iterations.

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