Hi everybody, my name’s Duncan & I’m new to blenderartists.org
I am beggining a project, and that is the development of a crowd/battle simulation add-on for blender that could function as a basic substitute for well known software like Massive and Miarmy.
I have no idea how I’m going to start this, but I guess that’s why I can ask the professionals on this forum! If this were your own personal project, where would you begin? I’m aware that harkyman created BlenderPeople, and it’s the exact direction I’m going in, but I’ll be spending a lot of time on the project, and hope to get a group of people working with me (whoever is interested)
Some ideas that I’ve come across have lead me to believe that developing a script will be well within reach, especially if a group of us work together.
- Ant procedural walk: http://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-195227.html
(Similar logic to the above could be used to generate the walk/run cycles of the soldiers, without weird glitches in the animation?)
- Crowd Simulation script: http://www.blendernation.com/2012/01/20/cockroach-crowd-simulation/
(Ideas from this project could be taken from here for some of the crowd logic?)
- Blender boids system
(Surely this code could somehow be utilized for the army simulations?)
- Ragdoll simulation & other blender physics simulations
My reasoning is that since Blender is so powerful as it is, and there have have been some successful attempts to create basic battle scenes in blender manually as it is, surely there is something that can be done to streamline and speed up the process of creating battle scenes, and take some of the manual animation work out of the equation for the end user?
I know that creating something like Miarmy in a week is not going to happen, and I don’t intend to get there in impossible time frames. I’m just saying that sooner or later, we as a blender community have got to come up with a battle field script for blender. So, why can’t I start?
I am not new to blender, but very new to python and haven’t made any scripts or addons in Blender. I have no idea where to begin in making this project, but I’m very determined to, and am prepared to work on it over the next few years.
I’m calling out for advice, ideas, books I can read, people who want to help me… you get the idea. Anything and everything that you guys have that will set me on the right path!
I’d really appreciate your input and support on this matter, and I’m sure everyone will love and benefit from the add-on when I’m finally able to release it!
So that’s it! Look forward to comments 
Duncan