Asset: Flock of Crows!
Added 2020-12-30 07:43:52 +0000 UTCEDIT: Figured out why the birds wouldn't change altitude! Something to do with the "minimum speed" slider (who knows why). Changed that from being maxed out, and they can fly up and down again. You can re-download the updated version, or just, y'know, make that slider not maxed out.
ALSO- in the video, I think because I just jumped straight into building the particle system from scratch, it might make it look more complicated than it has to be? You can just open the file, hit play, and start dragging around the BIRDSEED empty- it's good to go!
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I looked at SO much reference for this one. Every friggin' crow video on YouTube, haha
WHY did I make flying crows but sitting pigeons? I don't know, man. Crows fly, pigeons roost. That just feels right to me.
So you can immediately hit play and just start dragging around the "BIRDSEED" empty, or you're welcome to go in and tweak the settings to taste. The Emitter object has a transparent shader, so it won't show up in a render.
Personally I'm really excited to use these in a bunch of stuff. I have some old footage of crows flying that I sometimes rotoscope and drop into the background, but this should work a lot better, I think.
Download (right click save as)
Blender File
Comments
Do you know if it's possible to make the "goal" that the birds fly to be an actual shape? I can't seem to figure out how to get it to work on my end. But imagine that instead of flocking to specific point, they flock and end up more or less in the shape of say a letter or something.
2021-07-09 23:23:28 +0000 UTCall you need now is a telephone booth :)
Tony Rizo
2021-01-29 07:32:18 +0000 UTCAhahaha! I hadn't heard it before, but I do now.
Ian Hubert
2021-01-14 03:50:46 +0000 UTCAm I the only one that just hears an old timey gangster trying to say “birds” every time someone refers to Boids? “Look at all them boids, flying around in a mathematically correct simulation of flight patterns” ... guess it fits though
Joel P
2021-01-14 00:20:46 +0000 UTCThat looks quite realistic despite the lowres and quite simple anim, very nice way to cut corners and still got a very convincing look, good job!
2021-01-08 21:08:25 +0000 UTCHi Xavier! I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but I found this video very interesting on how to organize assets between different blender files: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxHGY_ZaQuQ
2021-01-03 15:31:25 +0000 UTCIan! Thanks for everything you do! I had no time to jump into all your videos and post but I know my time will come; I have a question, do you have a video or tutorial here or anywhere else about managing all your scenes, assets, how to choose the renderer and decisions and stuff, and basically staying organized and keeping performance allright? Thank you so much!
Xavier Albert
2021-01-02 16:26:24 +0000 UTCIt DL'd. If you fixed, thank you.
Ron Lemen
2020-12-31 20:17:01 +0000 UTCtried to DL the asset, doesn't seem to work. Thank you for the share and really looking forward to the episode.
Ron Lemen
2020-12-31 18:32:10 +0000 UTCOh sweet! Is the game in the blender game engine?? I'm worried the birds wouldn't work in unity or whatnot, because they use shapekeys/boids, and I don't know how well those transfer over (although- shapekeys and boids are fairly software-universal, yeah??)
Ian Hubert
2020-12-31 03:47:55 +0000 UTCThank you Ian ! Brillant as always :)
2020-12-30 23:50:46 +0000 UTCOh interesting!! Yeah his method's super clever, and probably would work better if you wanted super precise control. I love using BOIDS cause each bird automatically banks/follows its own path, which I don't think you'd get with hair-type particles.
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 23:39:21 +0000 UTCYes :/ At least at this point (it's the reason the emitter object is so tall, to give their starting point variety. I think they SHOULD be able to fly up?? But I kept tweaking everything I could think of and couldn't figure it out. I'll post here if I can figure out why it is!
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 23:30:31 +0000 UTCAhahaha yeah I posted a clip on instagram and people keep asking for a lazy tutorial on it and it's like- the EXACT same as the moth tut, just with a bunch more work in the shape keys.
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 23:29:02 +0000 UTCahahaha, I was thinking that! It's so easy to make the little bird swarms!
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 23:28:13 +0000 UTCyess. I need this more often than not in the background.
Anderson Atlas
2020-12-30 22:06:25 +0000 UTCTime to recreate birdemic
2020-12-30 21:57:05 +0000 UTCIan: model a moth in the wings down position... wait... I mean crow*...
Greg Beaudry
2020-12-30 20:51:37 +0000 UTCIs it normal that my birds don't want to follow the bird seed on the Z axis?
ZGB Studios
2020-12-30 19:54:14 +0000 UTCBird bird bird... bird is the word
Fes
2020-12-30 16:17:21 +0000 UTCI love learning more about boids, I recently used them to create a crowd of walking people. Funnily enough, Louis du Mont on youtube also released a video today about creating birds, where he uses a deformed icosphere as points to emit the birds from and then you can animate that. Not sure what method is better, but his seems a bit easier to control, but I think either method works based on use case.
Alex Doyi
2020-12-30 15:57:59 +0000 UTCEPIIIIIICCCCCCCCCC THANKS BRO
Patrick Lever
2020-12-30 14:19:06 +0000 UTCThis will be sooooo useful for a videogame I'm meaning to make. Thanks with all my heart :)
Mornarion
2020-12-30 13:39:57 +0000 UTCIt is time. Time to make Birdemic 3.
Nathan Vegdahl
2020-12-30 13:15:52 +0000 UTCHa thanks man. In compositing hell but nearly done! Hope you’re well!
Karl Poyzer
2020-12-30 09:50:35 +0000 UTCAbout animating the birds? I thought about it! It's all the same techniques I used in the pigeon video I uploaded a month ago, but... way messier (I ended up tweaking all the shape keys a TON to try to get stuff to feel right), but I could put one together specifically for flying birds, if you want!
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 09:48:25 +0000 UTCAhahaha, that's awesome to hear. I hope there's still time for them to be useful? ALSO! Very excited for Floaters 2!!
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 09:46:19 +0000 UTCAhhh man I had been wrestling with the idea of trying to make some of these for Floaters 2 but I’d run out of time! Once again it’s like your content output is basically The Room of Requirement
Karl Poyzer
2020-12-30 09:41:56 +0000 UTCHolly! We need more indeep tutorial about this!!!
Pudding Motion
2020-12-30 09:40:46 +0000 UTCforget the podcast, THIS is My Favorite Murder
Carter Burr-Kirven
2020-12-30 09:27:40 +0000 UTCI'm keen for Dynamo Dream, but I assume we'll get a lot of good procrastination content out of the final edit as well. These look great!
Zachary Macintyre
2020-12-30 09:05:35 +0000 UTCNow we need flock of seagulls
Mark Miller
2020-12-30 07:51:22 +0000 UTCAh! That's great!! I hope this works for the job! I wish I could figure out how to make them land and take off and all that- maybe some day with animation nodes??
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 07:50:49 +0000 UTCJUST SET THE SCALE TO 1.5 OR SOMETHING NO ONE WILL KNOOWWWWWW Actually, I can never tell if a bird is a crow or a raven until I see an actual raven. Then it's like oh. Yeah. That's a raven. Big friggin' birds.
Ian Hubert
2020-12-30 07:50:15 +0000 UTCYESSSSSSSSSSS EDGAR ALLEN POE HERE I COME..... wait his thing was a raven...... WHO’s GONNA KNOW!! Thanks so much Ian!!
Blake Rizzo
2020-12-30 07:48:36 +0000 UTCAre you psychic? I literally just found out I needed this exact element for a job 15 minutes ago. Life safer! Love you, Ian!
2020-12-30 07:47:14 +0000 UTCC R O W S ! ! !
D1a1v1e1
2020-12-30 07:45:46 +0000 UTC
