Release Notes
As of August 5th, 2025, Golaem will no longer provide direct support.
All support for Autodesk Golaem will now be handled exclusively through Autodesk support channels and this website will be deactivated.
Please bookmark the Autodesk Golaem Support section for any future support needs related to Autodesk Golaem packages.
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Golaem Crowd 2.0 (2012/08/07)
New Features
- Behavior Editor: create and assemble sophisticated behaviors with this new graphical editor.
- Ragdoll Behavior: simulate falling or exploding characters in a snap
- Formations Behavior: keep character’s formation shape while navigating
- GPU Character Previzualisation: preview simulation with skinned meshes proxies directly in the Maya viewport.
Improvements
- Multithread & Optimization: Golaem Crowd 2.0 is up to 15x quicker thanks to its new multithreaded and optimized simulation engine.
- Faster Navmesh Computation Method: compute navmesh at the speed of light (from several minutes to a few seconds depending on the terrain)
- Enhanced LookAt & IK behaviors: get greater control on characters
- New Triggers: control behaviors with frame number, volumetric triggers, or Python scripting...
Golaem Crowd 1.5 (2012/07/04)
New Features
- Golaem Crowd Proxy for Mental Ray in Maya: render crowds directly in Maya with Mental Ray
- Mental Ray parametric shaders: Switch, HSL, GetUserDataInt, GetUserDataFloat
Improvements
- Asset Manager: Shading group supported. IMPORTANT: Crowd Asset Manager files generated with previous versions of Golaem Crowd are no longer compatible
Bug fixes
- Golaem Crowd Maya plugin & Golaem Crowd procedural rendering plugins can now be loaded at the same time in Maya
- Skeleton Motion Converter: skeleton hierarchy including transform nodes are now correctly supported
Golaem Crowd 1.4.1
Improvements
- PopulationTool: Python binding for the tool
Bug fixes
- Asset Manager: fixed inconsistent asset ids
- Skeleton Motion Converter: fixed motion way computation
Golaem Crowd 1.4 (2012/03/15)
New Features
- Mental Ray procedural plugin
- RendermanStudioForMaya procedural plugin
- CrowdField: Instance Entities - entities (far from the pov) can be now declared as instances (not simulated, just generated at render time from an animated fbx file) - allows handling thousand of entities with amazing performances
- PopulationTool: added generation on mesh (can be dynamic)
- AvoidanceTargetLocator: new scatter attribute
- AvoidanceField: new boldness attribute
- AvoidanceField: new personal Space Radius attribute
- AvoidanceField: new onTargetReached enum attribute to control what to do when a target is reached (stop, pick next target, pick random target), valid for mode random target and target pool
- AvoidanceField: new target mode - targetIdPP to affect manually a target to each particle
- GeometryGroup: an AssetManager Character can now have several character geometries - this can be used to animate geometry which is not taken into account by the animation engine
Improvements
- SimulationTool: Python binding for the tool
- SimulationTool: Interface & menus improvement
- PopulationTool: huge performance improvement - particle generation is now a MpxCommand (instead of a MEL command) = 200k particles in 8sec
- Asset Manager: repartition weight in an Asset Group of a rendering type can be set to 50
- Asset Manager: CAM file path is displayed in the status bar
- AvoidanceField: new EntityHeight attribute (useful for not-in-cms scenes)
Bug fixes
- PopulationTool: fixed noise for point & quad tools
- PopulationTool: fixed transparency issues in locator display
- PopulationTool: fixed multipoints tool
- PopulationTool: fixed nParticles generation
- Skeleton Motion Converter: fixed Qt window crash with Linux
- CrowdField: fixed 0-lifespan particles
- CrowdField: motion cache is now cleared between two simulations
- Simulation Tool: fixed start & end frames for export
- Simulation Tool: fixed crash when exporting in empty directory
- BehaviorNode: fixed context menu for BehaviorNode creation
- VRay: handle special characters in node, scene & shader names
Golaem Crowd 1.3.1
Improvements
- Skeleton Motion Converter: Handles several bones with the same names but can not export it (regular behavior)
- Skeleton Motion Converter: Uniform method to export motion (independant from the skeleton type)
- Population Tool: Better noise for all shapes
Bug fixes
- Skeleton Motion Converter: Now takes rotateAxis values into account
- Skeleton Motion Converter: Now handles children joints as character skeleton root nodes
- Skeleton Motion Converter: Fix motion preview sometimes incorrect
- Population Tool: Fix a few bugs like the columns and rows count, the polygon shape "U problem"
- Renderman Plugin: Fixed an incorrect shader parameter bug
Golaem Crowd 1.3 (2011/11/07)
New Features
- CrowdField: a mesh (animated or not) can be added as a ground support in addition to the navMesh
- IK Behavior: New behavior to add a kinematic constraint on a body chain (arms, legs)
- LookAt Behavior: New behavior to make a character look at a specific position
Improvements
- New icons for Golaem Crowd object in the Hypergraph & the Outliner
- RenderMan, 3Delight & RenderManCompliant plugins: huge memory optimization
- Simulation Tool: FBX export now has 3 modes that are easier to understand
- Asset Manager: added the ability to rename, duplicate, drag&drop items
- Asset Manager: the same mesh can now be used more than one mesh asset
- CrowdField: locomotion is better computed in stairs
Bug fixes
- Renderer plugins: fixed a bug that causes a crash when using motion blur when the motion blur window is not an integer
- Asset Manager: fixed a bug that prevented adding an empty asset from Maya
- AvoidanceField: fixed a bug when skipping avoidance update
- Simulation Tool: FBX & renderer export: an error message is displayed in the script editor when no asset management file has been saved
- Simulation Tool: FBX & renderer export: the user is prompted to save the assets management window
- Simulation Tool: FBX & renderer export: fixed a crash when using a rendering type with a group having no asset
- Fixed multi-platform file paths compatibility
- Entity Surface Shape: fixed some OpenGl flags causing Maya crashes in some cases
- Entity Surface Shape: fixed wireframe issues
- CrowdField: fixed a bug that made people fly when walking upon obstacles
Golaem Crowd 1.2 (2011/09/07)
New Features
- Added Support for V-Ray Rendering Engine
- Added user scripts mel file: glmUserScripts.mel. Users can add their own scripts in this file. It's loaded at plugin load.
- Assets Manager: shader associations can be reseted to the mesh materials from Tools->Reset Shaders
- Assets Manager: added toolbars and buttons
- Assets Manager: added pop up menu to add a expand/collapse options
- AvoidanceField: distance to target can be exported to a PP attribute
- AvoidanceField: target id (crowd entity id) can be exported to a PP attribute (when the target is a particle system)
- AvoidanceField: a PP attribute can be used to skip entity update (Advanced tab)
- AvoidanceField: "lifespanPP" is used to skip "dead" particles when targeting a particle system
- AvoidanceField: comfort speed can be changed at runtime with the entity speed pp attribute
- AvoidanceTargetLocator: Add hierarchy of AvoidanceTargetLocator to be used as waypoints to define a navigation route
- CrowdField: user can choose which ground adaptation mode is used
- Motion Behavior: user can set a replay speed on the motion
- Motion Behavior: if use as loco is not checked, pick a random motion from the list
- Motion Locator: local translation is taken into account when playing a motion
- New glmCrowdFieldInfo command: infos on the Crowd Field. For now, it returns the particle of an entity or the entity Id of a particle
- New locator for Crowd Fields (CrowdEntitySurfaceShape) - it is now possible to assign a material and modify the bone width appearance
- New particle-related MEL functions for triggers
- Population Tool: added a "Look At" target orientations
- Population Tool: added generation on object pivot
- Population Tool: added generation on convex hull
- Simulation Tool: new "Use Existing Simulation Cache" option - Only exports the simulation without running it if a simulation cache exists
- TriggerNode: a custom MEL command can be run on success
Improvements
- Crowd behaviors (motion & IK head) are no longer deleted when connected nodes are deleted
- CrowdField: Use Motion As Field PP - Per particle attribute that enables the use of behavior motions to move the particles (replaces useBehaviorsAsField)
- CrowdField: Add feature to export multi crowdFields in a single pass of simulation
- Population Tool: generated geometry now shows correctly on the associated navMesh, bounding box is correctly set (was not scaling z against ratio)
- Simulation Cache format is now pdb32.gz (Disney Partio) - better performance and smaller particle files
Bug Fixes
- Assets Tool: assets are no longer lost when saving the scene under a different name
- Assets Tool: fixed a bug that prevents adding an empty mesh asset to a group when all meshes have been used
- Assets Tool: removed error message "Failed to open asset management file ''. The file does not exist!" when there is no assets file.
- Crowd Behavior: trigger now works when "Use As Loco" is activated
- Crowd IO: fixed a crash when the motion skeleton is different from the FBX skeleton
- Crowd IO: fixed a scaling bug when FBX root bone has a local scale
- Crowd IO: fixed a FBX skinning bug with meshes that are attached to joints with no deformation
- Crowd IO: fixed a bug with incorrect normals
- Crowd IO: fixed a bounding box computation bug
- Crowd RenderMan plugin & RenderMan compliant plugin: fixed coordinate system (right handed instead of default left handed)
- Crowd RenderMan plugin & RenderMan compliant plugin: fixed normals
- Motion Locator: fixed a root orientation bug that could affect some characters (final fix)
- Population Tool: fixed a crash when replacing a particleShape with renamed shape
- SkeletonMotion Converter: changed the way bones are scaled to support more characters
- SkeletonMotion Converter: now handle negative Maya frames
- Simulation Tool: fixed a crash when an entity type is associated to an invalid rendering type
Golaem Crowd 1.1 (2011/06/16)
New features
- SkeletonMotion Converter: Added a 2D previzualisation of skeleton when choosing detection mode
- SkeletonMotion Converter: Added visualization help and tooltip for mapping
- SkeletonMotion Converter: Added 2D previzualisation of the motion before exporting it
- NavMesh is now automatically mapped in most cases, otherwise accessible by a dropdown menu
- New MEL command: spatialRequestMELCommand (count entities in a given zone)
- Added an ExternalEntityLocator: permits to use an external object as an obstacle in the avoidance field
- Population Tool: Added a triangle shape
- Population Tool: Added a "quincux" mode
- Population Tool: Added a "replace particle shape" mode
- Behavior Node: Splitted into Behavior and TriggerNode (old files are no more compatibles, sorry for the inconvenience)
- Behavior Node: Added a loop option to the behavior (reevaluate a starting trigger after being stopped)
- Behavior Node: Automatically create 2 linked TriggerNode (start/stop). Customizable via Tool Setting
- Trigger Node: Triggers can be chained using AND/OR operator
- Trigger Node: Trigger can aggregate other triggers
- Trigger Node: One trigger can be shared between multiple BehaviorNode
- Trigger Node: Added a "zone" trigger type
- Trigger Node: drivenAttribute changed from "triggerAttribute" to "drivenAttribute"
- Assets Tool: Shader templates can be exported/imported
- Assets Tool: Shader Assets can use custom int/float shader attributes which are passed to the RenderMan plugin
- Better skeleton mapping interface
- RenderMan plugin uses surface shaders & texture coordinates with multiple diffuse materials
- 3Delight render plugin
- Renderman compliant plugin (.exe)
- Updated to support FBX SDK 2012
Improvements
- SkeletonMotion Converter: Window can be fully resized
- NavMesh Creator: Automatically add a navmesh locator after a succesful generation of navMesh (configured with the generated .gse)
- NavMesh Creator: Default maximum horizontal slope value has been set to 45° for better navMesh results
- NavMeshCreator: when the input geometry is not triangulated, the error message explains how to triangulate it within Maya.
- NavMeshCreator: construction history is now ignored
- Avoidance Field: random targets are now placed only in accessible zones
- Avoidance Field: characters keep on going to other target when reached random targets
- Avoidance Field: when using random targets entities keep moving between different targets
- Avoidance Field and crowdField now init at frame 1 instead of frame 2.
- Avoidance Field now handles directionPP attribute at initialization
- Population Tool: Added a "Emit Selected" command to enable emitting several PopulationTool at once
- Population Tool: Added ProgressBar (appears only if population time is more than 0.8s)
- CrowdField: removed warning when no directionPP/velocityPP is set on crowdField
- Assets Tool: Asset Tool is less annoying when the .cam was never saved
- Assets Tool: exports the meshes in the character and its skeleton without having to select them in maya
- Assets Tool: the caa file now only contains entity - renderingType associations
- Assets Tool: mesh distribution is done when exporting FBX/RIB and in the renderer plugins
- Assets Tool: shader data is computed in the renderer plugins
- Assets Tool: shader assets can be assigned to multiple meshes at the same time
- Assets Tool: Maya and FBX buttons are now unified
- Assets Tool: Meshes can be viewed in Maya when selected in the Assets tab (using Ctrl key)
- Assets Tool: meshes with the same name (but different paths) are now supported
- Assets Tool: rendering Types can be unassigned from entity types by removing them from the "Assign..." list
- Assets Tool: Individual meshes can now be added / removed from a mesh asset; the +/- buttons have
- shortcuts ([Numpad+]/[Del])
- Assets Tool: Added a character sample in tutorial resources
- Simulation Tool - FBX Export: materials are not duplicated anymore when all the characters are exported into the same FBX scene.
- Simulation Tool: changed the way errors are reported
- Simulation Cache Editor: a user defined output directory can now be used to export the edited cache
- All custom widgets have the locale English-United States: double spinboxes use . (dot) instead of , (comma)
Bug fixes
- SkeletonMotion Converter: fixed skeleton description export when bones are absent from the bindpose (which resulted in huge bones in the crowdfield locator)
- SkeletonMotion Converter: fixed a crash when joints have children that are not joints on a skeleton in Maya
- Fixed a bug when skeleton root != motion root
- Motion Locator: could not replay the motion on some specific characters
- Motion Locator: corrected a minor bug: the scale was not taken into account to apply the motion's translation
- Motion Locator: fixed a root orientation bug that could affect some characters
- NavMesh Creator: when selecting a transform node, all child meshes are properly added to the nav mesh computation
- NavMesh Creator: better error management
- Avoidance Field: fixed a bug where the result of the first simulation was different from the subsequent ones
- CrowdField: No more artefact crowd Entities are displayed when reseting a scene.
- CrowdField: More robust when touching the NavMeshFile.
- EntityType: multiple mapping of behavior nodes is now working
- Assets Tool: fixed a bug when saving the fbx character without giving the .fbx extension to its name
- Assets Tool: fixed a bug that caused changes to be lost when minimizing and restoring Maya
- Assets tool: Fixed a bug when saving the fbx character without giving the .fbx extension to its name
- Assets Tool: Fixed a bug that caused changes to be lost when minimizing and restoring Maya
- Simulation Tool: fixed crash on Simulation Protobuf export when selecting all attributes.
- Simulation Tool: Fixed pbz export bug when using entities with different bones count
- Fixed a bug where some characters are not exported correctly in FBX
- Fixed a bug that could crash Crowd on some FBX files
- Various bugfixes for linux version