Asset: Flock of Crows! (Patreon)
Content
EDIT: 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