Crowd

Hello

Two gladiators are fighting inside a circular arena.
All around,along the perimeter at the same level,people are watching the fight.
If I use 3d models for the crowd the number of tris is excessive
If I use sprites the quality is poor , also considering that I want to use 4 selectable cameras

Any suggestion ?

Thanks in advance

Since the perimeter is circular, can't you use a cilinder (and use FlipMesh to see the inner side) and apply a texture onto it?
This can be as detailed as you want, without using too much tris.

Even for a animated crowd, you could use an animated texture.

Mix the two methods? Models for close crowd shots, textures for distant crowd areas?

i would use decent quality models for the front crowd, very very low quality models for mid crowd and textures for the bad

me 3.