Wilfried Lhomme introduces his workshop with the first lesson, which provides a comprehensive guide for setting up Golaem crowd simulation software in Maya, emphasizing the importance of proper installation and configuration. Wilfried's methodical approach to both technical setup and project organization establishes a solid foundation for crowd simulation work. (While the software acquisition process changed during production following Autodesk's acquisition of Golaem, the core installation and setup workflow remains consistent across versions.)

Duration: 9m 25s

This lesson demonstrates the complete pipeline for creating professional crowd simulations in Golaem, from basic character import to complex behavioral systems. Wilfried emphasizes the importance of proper setup procedures, systematic node organization, and the critical caching step that transforms dynamic simulations into render-ready assets. By combining terrain navigation, collision avoidance, and varied animation states, artists can learn how to create realistic crowd behaviors suitable for production environments.

Duration: 39m 19s

This lesson demonstrates Golaem's sophisticated crowd-simulation capabilities, moving beyond basic crowd creation to professional-level techniques used in film and game production. Wilfried's covered workflows — from multi-entity management and physics integration to procedural animation systems — provide a comprehensive foundation for creating realistic, dynamic crowd behaviors. His emphasis on practical problem-solving and production-ready techniques makes this valuable training for anyone working with crowd simulation in entertainment-industry pipelines.

Duration: 49m 7s

This lesson establishes a complete pipeline for creating crowd simulations in Maya and rendering them in Unreal Engine 5 using Golaem. Wilfried's workflow enables artists to leverage Maya's crowd-creation tools while benefiting from Unreal Engine's superior lighting and rendering capabilities. The ability to make layout adjustments directly in Unreal provides flexibility for final scene composition and camera work, making this an efficient solution for high-quality crowd-visualization projects.

Duration: 17m 19s

This lesson establishes the environmental foundation required to create cinematic battle scenes in Unreal Engine. By combining free assets, procedural generation tools, and strategic asset placement, artists can learn how to efficiently build compelling battlefield environments without extensive manual modeling. Wilfried's modular approach enables flexible scene modification while maintaining focus on the areas visible during planned camera movements, making it an efficient workflow for crowd simulation projects.

Duration: 13m 59s

This lesson provides a comprehensive workflow for creating cinematic camera movements in Unreal Engine and transferring them to Maya for further production work. Wilfried's process emphasizes the importance of proper keyframe timing, environmental detail, and seamless asset pipeline management. By following his steps, artists can learn how to establish a solid foundation for complex scenes that involve crowd placement and cinematic storytelling, with the camera and environment assets properly prepared for the next phase of production in Maya.

Duration: 11m 51s

In this lesson, Wilfried covers a practical workflow for creating realistic battlefield crowd simulations using Golaem and Maya, with successful integration into Unreal Engine for real-time rendering. The key to success lies in proper scale management, efficient caching strategies, and understanding how to bridge the technical requirements between different software packages. This foundation prepares users for more complex crowd simulations involving live battle scenarios in future lessons.

Duration: 20m 57s

This lesson provides a comprehensive workflow for creating realistic foreground battle scenes using crowd-simulation tools. The key to success lies in careful planning of character placement, proper synchronization of fighting animations, and precise timing alignment between the crowd simulation and camera sequences. Wilfried's modular approach to creating separate caches enables better scene organization and easier integration of multiple crowd elements in complex shots.

Duration: 14m 24s

This lesson demonstrates the complexity of creating realistic crowd behavior for battle scenes, emphasizing the importance of terrain modification, curve-based pathfinding, and individual character timing. Wilfried successfully shows how multiple technical systems work together — from Maya's terrain tools to Golaem's crowd simulation to Unreal's rendering pipeline — to create convincing soldier movement through architectural spaces. This represents the final individual cache before moving to more complex procedural crowd setups.

Duration: 15m 22s

In this lesson, Wilfried demonstrates his sophisticated crowd-simulation techniques that create realistic military formation behaviors. The combination of vision sensors, procedural animation variation, and position-based movement triggers results in convincing line-by-line advancement rather than unrealistic synchronized movement. The technical framework established here provides the foundation for more complex behaviors, such as cavalry charges, that will interact intelligently with infantry formations.

Duration: 46m 57s

This lesson teaches how to create sophisticated behavior for cavalry units that can intelligently navigate around soldiers and other obstacles. The system uses multiple overlapping sensors and mathematical calculations to generate realistic movement patterns, with horses dynamically adjusting speed and direction in response to their environment. Wilfried's approach creates believable autonomous behavior that enhances the realism of military simulation scenes, preparing the setup for final composition adjustments and export to Unreal Engine.

Duration: 23m 18s

This lesson completes the basic crowd-simulation framework by integrating destructive cannonball physics with existing soldier and cavalry agents. The system now features realistic collision detection and response, including the sophisticated detail of soldiers being thrown from their horses when struck. While this foundation is solid, Wilfried outlines how he can further enhance it and scale the scene with larger armies and more refined behaviors to create a truly spectacular fortress battle simulation.

Duration: 9m 8s

This lesson demonstrates Wilfried's technical process of creating complex battle simulations with proper military formations and realistic timing effects. His systematic approach to building formations, managing spacing, implementing sequential cannonball firing, and optimizing the final layout shows how procedural crowd-simulation tools can create convincing large-scale battle scenes. His preparation for Unreal Engine export shows how this is part of a larger pipeline for creating cinematic battle sequences.

Duration: 19m 14s

In the final lesson, Wilfried teaches how to create and render a complex crowd simulation by combining multiple elements in Maya's Golaem system and exporting to Unreal Engine. He shows that, while the technical workflow involves many steps and potential issues, his iterative approach of testing, adjusting, and refining delivers impressive results. His final rendered sequence showcases a large-scale battle scene that can serve as a foundation for further compositing.

Duration: 12m 29s