Populating Ancient Pompeii with Crowds of Virtual Romans

Pompeii was a Roman city, destroyed and completely buried during an eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius. We have revived its past by creating a 3D model of its previous appearance and populated it with crowds of Virtual Romans. In this paper, we detail the process, based on archaeological data, to simulate ancient Pompeii life in real time. In a first step, an annotated city model is generated using procedural modelling. These annotations contain semantic data, such as land usage, building age, and window/door labels. In a second phase, the semantics are automatically interpreted to populate the scene and trigger special behaviors in the crowd, depending on the location of the characters. Finally, we describe the system pipeline, which allows for the simulation of thousands of Virtual Romans in real time.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Populating
• Ancient
• Pompeii
• with
• Crowds
• of
• Virtual
• Romans
• Computer
• Graphics

[Probesoul]

Nice job but please allow me to give some positive input regarding the crowds. Is it possible for you to not have everyone walking alone? Everyone seems to be walking alone by him or herself. Usually people walk as couples, families with children, a few friends, and folks by themselves etc. I think this would be more realistic and increase the pleasure of this virtual experience.

[jonmaim]

We have been recently working on groups inside crowds, I should post a new video soon. Cheers and thanks for your input !

[bonde92]

is it possible to download the program ?

[jonmaim]

not yet unfortunately, but i hope one day it will !

[bonde92]

what is this ? a game? a program ?

[jonmaim]

it's a real time crowd simulation

[yerk3]

Another cool realistic touch would be the detritus. This city looks too clean and plain. It would be good to have some graffiti on the walls, market stalls with hawkers shouting, maybe a busker with a dancing monkey, rich people's houses painted interesting colors, and straw and rubbish on the street in the poor section.

[yerk3]

The soldiers in armor would probably be walking in pairs and in definite directions, either on patrol or to and from the garrison.

[followthefleet1]

A bit robotic...and didn't people have any friends then? Everyone seems walking around in their own sphere, no one is walking together with anyone. The architecture seems too simplified...and it's more than a little antiseptic..no garbage or dirt anywhere..and no animals..no wagons or chariots. I wondered the time of the day...morning rush hour without cars? The background sounds are very good...and all in all, it's a very good concept, and very thought provoking. This vid could be built upon.

[cylinder4ify]

Very Good, I even hear woman wearing

high heels? hmmmm;) very realistic

[safetychoice]

This is very good although it is not clear to me why most of the poeple are walking so slowly. But this video helps us to understand what it must have been like. Roman cities were pedestrian cities. There were huge number of people but no cars, no buses, no horns, not even wheeled traffic during the day in Rome after Ceasar banned them. That is hard for us moderns to visualize but this video shows what it must have been like and sounded like.

[joetylerdale]

Very nice. A lot of good sugestions, I don't think most observers understand the complex issues you have to deal with, let alone what they want to make it more realistic!

[andy7666]

Yes, its a bit of a 'Politically Correct' wet dream! How downtrodden those poor computer people are! I suggest we amend our legislation to incorporate them imediatly! ;)

[fourlayers]

I find it ludicrous that all the "poor" people walk everywhere with their heads down.

[antyzkun]

molto bello grazie

[madhobbit]

very good, but needs more people sitting down, and standing, you never get all people at one time walking about.