Pedestrian Editor

The Pedestrian Editor authors the waypoints that the Animated Pedestrians feature consumes. A waypoint is a single anchor in the world that decides the type (walker, crew, spectator) and the look (which model / animation set) of the character that appears there. The editor lets you drop waypoints one at a time for precise work and generate hundreds in a few clicks for crowd scenes.

How to open it

Enable Show Advanced Settings and Show Editor Tab in App Settings.
Open the Editor tab, then the Pedestrians sub-tab.

How the editor is structured

The same editor view covers three tightly-linked jobs, selectable with three menu buttons:

WAYPOINTS — individual placement and per-waypoint properties.
CONNECTIONS — walk paths between waypoints for pedestrians that patrol.
PEDESTRIANS — browse and assign which model / animation set each waypoint uses.

Above those menus sit the bulk tools (Draw Area, Spacing, Density, Walking/Standing switch). Bulk tools produce waypoints into whichever menu you are in. They are a shortcut, not a separate system.

How to fill a crowd zone in under a minute

Crowd scenes (grandstands, festival zones, race starts) are dense collections of waypoints. Placing them one by one would take hours. Draw Area exists exactly for this:

Switch the Walking/Standing toggle to Standing — crowds watch, they do not wander.
Set Spacing small (2 – 3 m) so characters sit shoulder-to-shoulder.
Set Density to 100 % for a packed stadium, or 60 – 70 % for a realistic half-empty row.
Click Draw Area and click the four corners of the region in the world. After the fourth click the editor generates a grid of waypoints inside the rectangle and assigns them the current category.
If the result is wrong, click Undo once and try again — the editor keeps one level of undo for the last bulk operation.

Walking/Standing controls the kind of waypoint the bulk fill produces; Spacing controls how close they sit; Density controls how many cells of the grid actually get populated (lower density = natural gaps).

How to build a walking crowd that patrols

Walkers need somewhere to walk. A waypoint marked as Walking with no connections behaves like a Standing waypoint — the character stands there because they have no destination. Real walking pedestrians require a network of connections.

Switch Walking/Standing to Walking.
Use bulk Draw Area or manual placement to drop waypoints along pavements. For walkers, spacing of 10 – 15 m feels right.
Switch to the CONNECTIONS menu.
For each waypoint, connect it to its two or three nearest neighbours. This creates a mesh the pedestrians can traverse back and forth.

Pedestrians pick a neighbour at random when they arrive at a waypoint, wait a short idle, then walk to it. A dense connection mesh produces an organic-looking drift through the area; sparse connections produce a more obvious patrol behaviour.

How to place individual waypoints with precision

For things like pit crew or a single marshal at a corner, bulk fill is overkill. Use the WAYPOINTS menu:

Click Add Waypoint and click the exact world spot.
Use the 3D gizmo on the newly placed waypoint to nudge its position.
Set the type — Standing, Walking, Crew or Spectator — depending on what role the character plays.
Assign an Animation Set so the character uses appropriate gestures (a marshal waves a flag, a pit crew holds a tool).

Editing an existing waypoint is the same flow — click to select, edit properties in the panel, drag the gizmo to relocate. Press Delete to remove.

Connecting waypoints so pedestrians actually walk

A waypoint placed on its own is a destination, not a route. For walking pedestrians you need connections between waypoints — edges that define which waypoint can be walked to from which. There are two ways to create them.

Manual connections. Hold Ctrl and click a waypoint — or select it from the waypoint list — to enter connection mode. From there, click the other waypoints you want to connect it to. This gives you precise control and is what you use on complex networks.

Auto-connect while placing. There is also a keyboard shortcut (roughly along the lines of holding Shift+C; check the current binding in the editor) that makes every new waypoint you place automatically connect to the previous one. This is the fast way to draw a continuous walking path — drop points in sequence and the connections form themselves.

Close the loop

Always connect the last waypoint back to the first. If you leave the chain open, pedestrians that reach the final waypoint will simply stop there — a line of characters standing around the end of your route looks wrong.

There is a fallback: when a pedestrian arrives at a waypoint with no outgoing connection, the system tries to find another nearby waypoint to walk to on its own. It works often enough to be invisible in simple scenes, but it is unreliable. The most common failure modes are pedestrians walking through the air (the next waypoint it jumped to is at a different height) or sinking slightly into the ground as they pick their way across broken geometry. Making a closed loop avoids all of this.

Precise placement on elevated or uneven terrain

Pedestrians walk in a straight line between connected waypoints. They do not ease up over ramps, they do not follow the contour of the ground, and they do not duck under obstacles. If waypoint A is at the top of a hill and waypoint B is at the bottom with no intermediate points, the pedestrian will walk in a straight line from A to B — which may mean clipping through a slope, floating above a dip, or cutting through a railing.

On tracks with notable elevation, place waypoints densely and precisely where the terrain changes. Each extra waypoint along a slope is a new straight segment, and enough short segments approximate the terrain well enough that the pedestrian stays on the ground. This is one of the rare places in the editor where spacing really does matter.

How the category of a waypoint changes its animation

Type is more than a label. Each category pulls from a different animation library at runtime:

Standing — neutral idle loops (looking around, shifting weight).
Walking — pavement walking loops, including short stops.
Crew — pit work gestures, tool use, flag signals.
Spectator — crowd gestures, clapping, head-tracking cars as they pass.

Putting a Spectator waypoint on a pavement produces a character that visually looks wrong (applauding at passing traffic); putting a Walking waypoint in a grandstand produces characters that try to walk through seated neighbours. Pick the type that matches the physical context.

How Animation Sets relate to pedestrian models

The PEDESTRIANS menu is a catalogue of installed pedestrian models and their animation sets. Different models cover different looks (business attire, casual, pit crew uniform, hi-vis marshal). Assigning a specific set to a waypoint or a group of waypoints is how you theme an area — a stand full of racing fans looks different from a stand full of office workers, even if both are Spectator type.

Typical project layouts

Circuit track

Draw two areas of Standing waypoints (grandstands) with high density. Scatter a handful of Crew waypoints around pit boxes. Optionally a few Walking waypoints with connections in the paddock walk zones.

City street

Draw walking areas along pavements at 10 – 15 m spacing, 40 – 60 % density. Connect neighbours in CONNECTIONS. Add individual Standing waypoints at doorways, crossings, and transit stops for variety.

Rural pass

Usually almost nothing. A few Standing waypoints at viewpoints (people taking photographs) and at road-work zones is more atmospheric than an actual crowd.

Testing your work live

Waypoints appear as live characters as soon as the Animated Pedestrians master toggle is on and the cap / render distance allow for it. Drive past your newly authored area to see the result immediately. If nothing appears, check the master toggle first, then raise Max Pedestrians, then Pedestrian Render Distance.

Interaction with other features

Animated Pedestrians. Consumes these waypoints. All quality / count decisions happen there.
Walking Mode / Phone. The same waypoints back walkable characters you can move among inside walking mode.
Performance Preset. Low preset caps pedestrians hard — your crowd may look populated on High and sparse on Low from the same waypoints.

Troubleshooting

Draw Area does nothing after the fourth click: Spacing / Density at extreme values can produce zero waypoints. Reset to Spacing 10, Density 100 and try again.
Pedestrians appear but do not walk: Missing connections. Add walk paths between neighbouring waypoints in the CONNECTIONS menu.
Crowd looks too uniform: Drop Density to 40 – 60 % for gaps, and mix in several models via the PEDESTRIANS menu for visual variety.
Spectators look like walkers: Waypoint type is still Walking. Change to Spectator so the correct animation set is used.
Waypoints are invisible in game: The master Pedestrians toggle must be on, and Max Pedestrians / Render Distance must be high enough to reach your waypoints.