TUTORIAL: How to populate scenes with a crowd

So this is the scene that I want to populate. I copied it out of my main model for the purposes of working on the crowd. It has three small temporary stands, designed to sit around a basketball or volleyball court.

To start with, you'll need to build up your components. Get a bunch of cutout people from any one of the free sites out there. Import it into a rectangle 1.75m tall and the appropriate width. Make the rectangle into a face-me component with the axis point at the bottom centre of the rectangle. Repeat this for all of the other cutouts - I have a collection of 21 varied models I use for my project. 

Delete all of the seats and the back faces of the stands, until you're left with just the faces on each row. This will be used to define the area people might be standing.

Repeat that for the remaining stands.

Select all of the faces and use the "Component Spray" plugin. Pick 8 of the cutouts, spray on Selected Faces, lower the pressure and adjust the scaling, and then spray. Repeat the process until the cutouts have all been sprayed.

This should be roughly what you see. Make the selected faces into a group, and then make all of the cutouts into a group.

Copy and paste the cutouts group back over the top of the stand. Open it and delete all of the cutouts situated over the top of the aisles.

Finished. As you can see, the process is rough, but it accomplishes the end result quickly.