The Avoid behavior lets you specify any object or objects that delegates must keep away from. As delegates approach designated objects during the crowd simulation, they steer clear of them while turning and/or braking as necessary.
This behavior uses three different methods to let delegates avoid each other and other objects: Steer To Avoid, Repel, and Vector Field.
Steer to Avoid behavior is best used for animals that steer around each other at close proximity. Earthbound animals and fish typically do this. Steering motion may be sudden since its action is often engaged for relatively short periods of time.
By contrast, Repel avoidance behavior mimics the continuous action of a repellent magnetic field. Birds, bats and flying insects are best animated with large Repel fields so that they can smoothly avoid each other while maintaining a comfortable margin of error. Repel forces prevent intrusion from all sides, regardless of the direction of travel. Thus even animals that rely mainly on Steer to Avoid will also need some degree of Repel avoidance to maintain spatial separation when they are moving through dense traffic. The forces of Repel avoidance are always directed uniformly outward in a spherical shape.
Use Vector Field avoidance for cases where crowd members must avoid hitting the more complex shapes of arbitrary 3ds Max objects. The outward forces of the Vector Field avoidance can constructed to form the shape of any object. For example, suppose you want to animate a school of fish swimming around a sunken ship. In this case, a vector field can be created so that it extends the shape of the ship into the surrounding space. The field is computed by scan converting the ship's surface normals into a 3D lattice that surrounds the ship. These normals will extend into space as "beacons" in the 3D lattice, telling the fish how to best swim away from the shape of the ship. As the fish enter the space of the vector field lattice, they can be precisely repelled along an avoidance force directed away from ship's surface.
Specifies a single target. Click this button, and then click the target object in the viewport. The target name then appears on the button.
If you've selected multiple targets using Multiple Selection (see next item), the word Multiple appears on the button. To see which objects are designated as targets, click the Multiple Selection button.
Steer To Avoid is used by delegates to steer precisely around anticipated future collisions based on the delegates' current speed and direction. Delegates using this approach can pass very close to one another.
Determines how strongly a delegate will react when it encounters an avoided object. Higher values make the delegate more likely to slow down or stop. Lower values will cause delegates to look for a way around the obstacle so they can keep going, sometimes causing delegates to veer off in unexpected directions. Default=2.0.
Repel is a general separation force that is based only on the spatial position. Delegates use this to keep from getting into situations where they might side-swipe each other or where they might get so close that Steer To Avoid is too difficult to achieve.
The rate at which the strength diminishes between the Repel radius and the hard radius. A value of 1.0 indicates a linear falloff. Higher values cause the strength to fall off to zero more rapidly with distance, thus focusing its effect closer to the delegate's hard radius. Lower values reduce the rate of diminishment, with a Falloff setting of 0.0 indicating that the strength is the same at the Radius distance as it is at the Hard Radius. Default=3.0.
If you've applied a Vector Field space warp to an object in your scene, you can specify the vector field as an object to avoid. The distinction is this: When used with the Space Warp behavior, delegates use the vector field to steer around the object by being guided to travel perpendicular to the field's vectors. When used with the Avoid behavior, the delegate simply moves away in the direction of the vectors.