Own characters and animations feature: Hi guys, my fan spawner has been doing really well and I would like to thank you for all the support. Everyone has been asking how to make your own vertex animations and use your own characters. I made mine externally and can't do that anymore. I have been working for months on a new plugin to allow this but epic seems to have already done this. I have included a link below on how you might do it in UE5, I haven't tried this way so I can't offer much support. Unreal Engine 5 AnimToTexture Plugin, 

Thanks

Trailer: Stadium Fan Spawner Showcase

• Overview of product.

Tutorials: 1: Fan Spawner Tutorial 1

2: Fan Spawner tutorial 2

Version 2: Features/tutorial Video 3 ( Version 2 is only available for version 4.27) IMPORTANT: Version 2 Video only covers the new features. See Tutorials 1 and Tutorial 2 for other features.

Demo: Download NOW Performance Demo Demo V 4.27 (The demo is for checking against performance for your system and only has 2 characters with 3 animations) IMPORTANT: The DEMO doesn't include any features like paint chairs remove chairs and spawning as this would compromise giving the product away for free.

IMPORTANT: For the editor utility blueprint to work, you need to enable the pre-installed plugin by unreal called "editor blueprint utilities" to allow the helper blueprint I've made to work. Note: the editor blueprint makes the process a lot easier.

Confusion on "too big to select" mode: Too big to select is only designed for when your bp has so many chairs like 50k it's too laggy to select, or it takes like 3-minutes to select it. This mode allows you to select fan's bp and change its parameters without directly selecting it in terms of preventing the 3-minute lag spike.

Details:

Currently, there are 20 characters in V2 (with 15 still in V1) and 12 animations for the fans with a mixer mode to add some variation. This fan spawner is ideal for games that include stadiums and events. This tool has a lot to offer (as listed in the features tab). This tool has two editors a line editor and a square editor, the line editor you can use to do stands that are curved, and in the square editor, you can manipulate spline points to fill your chairs all around weird and different shaped stands to best suit your needs. Instead of using the side panel I've made an editor widget which is big and easy enough to understand and makes the process a lot simpler. (This is preinstalled plug-in by Unreal Engine so all you have to do is enable it.) When selecting a fan spawner BP asset the editor blueprint will show all the appropriate things relating to that blueprint, like the chair height and custom ground offset. There are also settings such as chair model and color along with the editor type (Line editor or chair editor). When you change to the line editor 2 extra options become available which set how many chairs going back (as there's no back spline for the line BP) and curve smoothness to smooth out the chair's spline. The "add chairs in" button spawns the chairs into the BP under a new blueprint called "Fans BP".

In the editor blueprint for fans BP (which auto changes based on what BP you've clicked on) you can toggle different modes like paint chairs and remove chair mode. With paint chairs mode selected you can paint letters, numbers, or images with the tool. Football teams might have their team's name painted in the stands. You can choose from a variety of colors and change your brush size, however, the colors are currently pre-set but a color wheel is coming in V2. once you are done quit the game and click the button that says update chair colors. The process for removing chairs is the same. (Note: Either mode can NOT be entered if fans have been spawned to prevent lag / bugging out.)

With reference to the fans BP in the level BP you can set the fans spawn percentage along with a torch and constant light percentage. Animations can be changed by a material parameter which also includes a mixer mode which for example, if the material parameter is on 3 it will select a random sitting animation to play so there not all playing the same one. If mixer mode is off each person starts their animation at a random start time so on a single animation it still looks random.

This tool is really powerful I've refined the LODs really well for optimal performance but still producing great results. I managed to get 250k fans on an RTX 2060 with 130 FPS. Check out my tutorial videos listed below where I cover in more detail the processes on how to use this tool.

Version 2.0 Only available on 4.27

NEW Features:

1. 8K tri-Fan Models (Fans look a lot cleaner up close)

2. Clothes Color Randomizer (Can barely see duplicated fans)

3. 2 New fan Animations (Get to seat animations L and R)

4. Walk to seat feature (Trigger individual fans to walk to seat after halftime)

5. No chair feature with place holder (for Festivals )

6. Renamer (Rename BP when you spawn)

7. 5 new fan models (makes it harder to notice doubles of fans)

Tutorials:

Version 2: Features/tutorial Video (Only available for version 4.27) see below for details and features!!!

Tutorial 1: Fan Spawner Tutorial 1

• How to draw where you want your fans, change chair models, etc.
• Overview of how to use BP fan spawner.
• How to use line and square editor and use editor blueprint.

Tutorial 2: Fan Spawner tutorial 2

• Goes over the spawner Fans BP
• Covers feature's like paint chairs mode and remove chair mode
• At the end, we cover how to spawn the fans in and set how many fans you want.
• Also how to change animation and shows the process on how to use the mix animations function.

Tutorial 4: Fan Spawner tutorial 4

• 250K test with LODs shown with freeze rendering.
• Phone torches at night and flashing explained.
• 2 torch method for constant phone torches.

Animation List (Mixer off) :

1. Crowd_Std_Clapping
2. Crowd_Std_Clappping
3. Crowd_Seat_Clapping
4. Crowd_Stand_Celebration
5. Crowd_Std_Celebration
6. Crowd_Sit_Celebration
7. Crowd_Std_Idle
8. Crowd_Sit_Idle
9. Crowd_Sit_Idle
10. Crowd_Std_Angry
11. Crowd_Seat_To_Std_Angry
12. Crowd_Jump_Up

Animation List (Mixer on)

1. Random 1 of 3 - clapping animations
2. Random 1 of 3 - celebration animations
3. Random 1 of 3 - idle animations
4. Crowd_Std_Angry
5. Crowd_Seat_To_Std_Angry
6. Crowd_Jump_Up