Hi guys and gals. I have a request I been searching but has been proven difficult. Maybe I am just searching with the wrong key words perhaps? not sure. what I am doing essentially is placing fans within a stadium. What I need is 2 fold. One, to place those crowd/fans along the “flat” areas of the stepped tiers of the stadium but not the other parts (where they would effectively sit or stand cheering) though I don’t mind placing them manually if truly needed. Second, randomize their density, so crowd dispersal looks organic and realistic and not robotic with it all full side by side. Meaning I can randomize the number of fans based on min max values for the script to show those fans within the seated/standing areas of the stadium. thoughts? I greatly appreciate any help you all can muster.
Hi, i would recomment you taking a look at the Poisson Disc Sampling algorithm. The algorithm basically fills a rectangle area with randomly placed circles of a predefined radius. A good example plus explanation can be found here:
You could also easily limit the amount of maximum dots (representing fans) being placed.
The one main problem would be the shape of the area. There are different variations of the algorithm. The version liked above is for rectangle areas. There is also a variant for spheres and so on. I dont know what area your stadium-parts are going to be, so you’ll need to adjust for that yourself.
Placing the fans themselves should be rather easy. Each circle would represent a fan, with the circle radius being the radius of a fan, thus no overlapping can happen. The fans can then easily be placed on the ground using raycasts.
You can also consider using raycasts or other checks before allowing the PDS circles to be accepted in the first place. Thus you could prevent fans from getting placed too close to… i dunno… chairs or whatever. I’m not a big stadium-goer myself as you may have noticed 
Anyways, i believe this may be a solution worth looking into for you.
so this would allow for easier more efficient placement. instead of having to deal with the high poly amount I’d otherwise suffer through? or instead of circles it would just by my fans themselves? and yes the stadium has curved portions around the corners. Sadly I am no programmer. I am looking for a plug in to do the heavy lifting for me.