---
title: "Chapter 4 - Crowd Agents"
canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/VMAX/113586882/Chapter%204%20-%20Crowd%20Agents"
format: markdown
---
This page contains chapter 4 of the Houdini to 3ds Max Alembic Workflow tutorial, covering the export of Crowd Agents.


## **Overview**

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Crowd agents in Houdini are represented by what is called a **Packed Agent Primitive**. Packed Agents are a hierarchical structure, a *container* of sorts, that stores the rig, geometry and the animation clips that go with your model. This data is used to create what is called the *definition* of your agent. Furthermore, each **instance** of an agent can have a different set of shapes to randomize the appearance of your crowd - this is referred to as *layers*.

Houdini stores this data on disk and represents each **instance** of an agent in a simulation as a *single point* with a bunch of attributes that govern its appearance and behavior. At render time, Mantra reads those attributes and pulls the necessary information to render your agent with the correct layer/shapes applied to it.

Unfortunately, to our knowledge, the Alembic format does not provide this functionality. When you export a crowd simulation as Alembic, each agent instance is basically baked into the file, producing rather large amounts of data on disk.

The best option for rendering Houdini Crowds with V-Ray in 3ds Max is exporting them to a **VRayScene** using **V-Ray for Houdini** and loading them into 3ds Max.


> Macro (anchor)

You can download the project's files from here: 

> Macro (ui-button)




## **Export**

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## **Import into 3ds Max**

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