Oh, by the way - using a target spot I have figured out how to create the circular light on the floor, yet is there a way to show the actual light 'rays'? The transparent coloured cone shape between the spot and the light itself.

My biggest issue is really the synchronised animating of the audience members. I intend to create a member of the audience, animate and duplicate it to create part of the crowd. I will then repeat the process two more times so that there are three 'sets' of audience members, each moving in unison but seperately to the other groups.

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My latest 3D project:
[Link to ja3dface.blogspot.com]

Ok I just wrote a big long in depth answer and my damn computer froze up. not very pleased about that hmm. anyway heres version 2.

1. You will need to use volume light on your spotlights to get the cone effect. volume light is an atmospheric effect like fog. press the "8" key to bring up the environment effects menu.
add a volume light effect in the atmospheric effects rollout and choose the spotlight (or lights) that you want. adjust the density and add some subtle noise. it can take a bit of fiddling to get it just right. for an animation you can key the noise to drift a bit too.

Also the colour of the light is changed in the lights settings on the modifier tab and if you want to animate the colour jumping around like a disco you could use a noise point 3 controller on the colour value in track view. find the light in trackview and the parameter "color" then right click> add controller >choose noise point 3 then mess with the x y z values and the noise graph until you get the right speed and colour fluctuations.

You could also build open ended cones with geometry and texture them using falloff maps to achieve the effect as you would for a realtime volume light but that can be tricky to get looking right, but much faster to render.

2. The bobbing heads are fairly straight forward. animate one head bobbing for the duration of the animation. shift drag a copy and repeat for the whole audience.
then select each one individually and move all the keyframes backwards or forwards several frames. slightly differently for each one. then you will get a nice offset look in the mosh pit. or if you want the groups to move in unison just offset them in groups.

Hope that helps.

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