Procedural rendering is now supported in Golaem Crowd 2.2, just released by the Golaem crew. Solid Angle's Arnold renderer enables some pretty fast rendering and simulation independent geometry and shader actions.
The software lets animators create crowd shots using familiar tools such as particle systems – as opposed to the AI-based approach of packages like Massive – and is in use at studios including Zoic and Mikros Image.
The new Golaem Crowd Render, brings all Crowd rendering proxies together in a single installation so it can be deployed on whatever render farm you have, on an unlimited number of rendering nodes. Additionally, Golaem Crowd 2.2 brings in new procedural shaders for automatic diversity generation in the crowd creations. These are available for a while range of renderers, including mental ray, RenderMan and V-Ray.
Golaem Crowd in action