I’ve been experimenting with creating very large animated animal populations in Unreal Engine, and wanted to share one of my latest tests — a herd of 500+ animated Parasaurolophus moving together across an Unreal landscape.
One of the challenges I wanted to solve was creating the impression of a large, living herd without needing to spawn and manage hundreds of individual AI-controlled actors.
For this test, the dinosaurs are running through Massive Herd-Lite, a system I developed using instanced skeletal meshes. Individual herd members transition between walking, grazing/eating, and idle animations while the herd moves across and follows the landscape terrain.
The Parasaurolophus uses its own skeletal mesh and animation set. After creating a custom herd preset and Blueprint, the same system I originally developed around bison could drive hundreds of completely different creatures.
The result is 500+ independently animated dinosaurs forming a moving herd without creating 500 individual AI characters.
I created a tutorial showing the complete process of adding the Parasaurolophus, assigning its animations, creating the custom herd setup, and generating the herd.
Massive Herd-Lite is now available on Fab, and I’m continuing to develop and experiment with the system for wildlife, prehistoric environments, cinematics, and games.
I’d love to hear what you think — and what animal or dinosaur you’d like to see tested with a large herd next.
Massive Herd-Lite is now available on Fab: