Bird Flock/Swarm

#1

Hello All!!

I’m new to the forums. I’m trying to make a flock/swarm of birds using a particle system in Maya. I’ve been playing around a little bit but I’ve been unable to achieve something that looks like the reference image below. Everything I’ve made does not have the same density along with the variance in density. What has worked though, is using sprites with pngs of birds in various flying positions.

Has anyone done anything like this before or have any words of advice/pointers? Are there any fields that might help the particles stay in a tighter group?

Thank you!

#2

Using nParticles you can use Force Field to attract particles a certain distance from each other.

You could also use a low res geo shape as an nRigid, with normals reversed, or a Field with Trap Inside instead, to contain the birds in a shape like an anvil, or what you have pictured.

Iif you are animating the flock, use the Force Field on the geo, turned into an undulating nCloth, to move and attract the shapes of the flock. Or the quickest way would be Goals.

BTW - textures can be used in the Force Field to give you noise and shapes in the density.

#3

Also you can look up at MASH

http://mash.mainframe.co.uk/

#4

Same question for me, I also want to find the drill. As Howard said if I use a mesh or field to trap particles in, how to avoid particle bouncing on the boarder?

#5

Thanks for the feedback!

I’ll give it a go and let you know how it goes!

#6

Ok. So I tried some of your suggestions and got some results that I’m very happy with! Thank you!

But…now I’m having a different issue. This time with rendering.

I’ve made a very simple PP expression, rand(1,3), that randomizes an image sequence within a lambert shader. It work perfectly in my viewport but when I go to render only one of the three images renders. I’m using mental ray to render. Would that be the issue?

There are two attached images. One is a screen shot of the viewport and the other is a screen shot of a render region.

Any ideas why this is happening?

Thanks!

#7

mental ray doesn’t support PP attribute transfer in sprites. You will need to use the hardware renderer or if your using Maya 2015 you could use hardeware2.0.

#8

ah, ok. That explains it.

Thanks mandark!