A scene needs twenty people standing in it: add a character, place it, add another, place that one — by the fifth you want to give up. The crowd array in DOTV's Previz lines up a whole batch at once — give it rows, columns and spacing, and the batch forms up, after which you work with the whole batch as one thing; a crowd shot in an AI video has its reference in seconds. This section covers lining up a crowd, and moving and changing the batch as a whole.
The row-of-figures icon on the toolbar opens three numbers to fill in:
| Field | Range | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Rows | 1–20 | How many ranks deep they stand |
| Columns | 1–20 | How many across |
| Spacing | 0.2–5 m | How far apart two neighbors stand |
Click Add crowd and the batch forms up around the center of the scene (20×20 at most, which is four hundred people).
Need a few people out of the formation doing something else? Add them separately with Add character; do not expect to pull one out of the array — members of an array only go where the batch goes.
This is the real difference between a crowd array and adding twenty characters:
A crowd shows up in the shot and in captures like anything else. With a lot of people, put them in the background first and then go back to the leads and the camera — the depth of the shot comes out right the first time.