I have always hated when people said EVERYONE PLEASE READ, but I coun’t think of a subject. Anyhow I am describing my peril here: http://snow.prohosting.com/uslcs/band/ex.html . It the geatist piece of writing I did, so if there are any question/comments/accusations feel free to e-mail me or post here.
And hy do I have a feeling that this should go in the Q&A forum?
probobly so
Hey, I’ve actually thought of this before! (they say it’s never hard to find a band geek 
)
Anyway, I would also see the general idea including things like bezier curves (maybe, pending possible additions to the Python API), dupliverts, and definitely a python script to control it all. However, that would have to be one mammoth script. Also, it would be most convenient to include things such as allowances for adjusted steps (this year’s drill for my school has tons of those) and two options of hashes (inside hashes I believe used for college mostly, and outside for high school). Also, depending on music, sets tend to be spread by a different amount of beats (8, 16, 24, 12). :-? Hmm, some mega script indeed, unless there was a way to include all this set information in a separate ASCII file written by the user and parsed by the script. Still, a fairly large job, but conceivable. Nice idea! 8)
Ah, a fellow band geek! I wasn’t thinking of having a vmarchers march until the end. Until then they will just “float” accross the field. 
The field will be a plane that will have 2 textures the user can use, a football field with both hashes and the other will be a grid like that found on a drill sheet. Another issue is that music is known to change tempo, reflecting that in blender will be a bi***. Our school does odd tempos too.
I will take over the world with this program, with a blender in my hand an the Blender Guide by my side! I need help.
what school? I’d like to meet some mo’ blenderheads. I’m at cornell
I weant to Centennial high School in Gresham Oregon, now I’m going to Western Oregon University in Monmouth (thats near Salem, Oregon).
Whatever you do, don’t drink too much and try to cross the bridge over the chasm when the wind is blowing. 
As another fellow marching band geek I understand the usefullness of this. I really don’t know if it would be that feasable with the level that blender is at right now. The rendering would be long!!! With about 250 poly’s per “avatar” that would be 25000 for a whole 100 person band set. For a larger university band it would be even larger. And the walk-cycle would be hard, too. To get a good, acurate frame of walk would be very scary. Anyway - good idea.
BTW I play Tenor Sax in marching and Jazz band at Winnetonka HS in Missouri.
I could just use stick people 
It might be easier to have the end user do one song at a time, sence most shows are 3 or 4 songs. The sheer size of the thing is scaring me. Evergreen High School in Vancover Washington has over 220 people!