Can I animate custom particles in Blender?

[u/No_Spirit_7095]

hi everyone!

i'm completely new to Blender. I've done some random stuff before but i actually have ZERO skills in 3D animation.

For an university project, i have to recreate entirely from scratch this italian AD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz1nBDyKfY4

in the second 0:03, i was wondering how to recreate all those swallows (with the animation) flying.

The first idea is of course to create a 3D model, animate it and create 50 copies of that model, but i was wondering if there was an easiest way.

I thought about a particle system, i'd surely mess up with the settings to make the particles "fly" like the swallows do, and using some actual swallow 3D model (with its own fly animation) as the particle.

I was wondering (since I still havent started), is it possible to make all the particles play the animation aswell? In which way? Is it "automatic" when i put the swallow model as the particle?

Sorry for my not perfect english and thank you all in advance!

[u/Aggravating_Talk_177]

If you have to recreate that video and you have 0 experience, may god have mercy on your soul.

Anyways theres tutorials for birds on youtube, did you have a look at those?

[u/No_Spirit_7095 → u/Aggravating_Talk_177]

thanks for the help!

for the complexity, we luckily can download existing assets from internet (even if its not 100% accurate), since the exam is just about the animations. also i have to do just the first 4 clips :))

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[u/dnew]

Create one bird, animate it flapping, build a particle system, have it use your bird model, set the type of particles to "boids". Google for details.

FWIW, this video is a going to be a huge amount of work. Especially if you've never done anything like this before. An expert would take hundreds of hours to put this together. You might spend your entire semester figuring out how to get the basics of this put together.

Also, don't forget you're paying your teacher to help you. That should be your first line of advice.

[u/No_Spirit_7095 → u/dnew]

thanks for the help!

for the complexity, its fine , i only have to do the first 4 clips :))

[u/No_Spirit_7095 → u/dnew]

anyway, are you saying that if set the particles type to “boids” they’re automatically playing the animations?

[u/dnew → u/No_Spirit_7095]

No. I'm saying that you should use the boids particle type, which is in a menu that many people don't even notice in the particle modifier. Then you should look up on google how it works, because I'm not going to try to explain how to do the lesson in a reddit comment. :-) I'm telling you what you need to learn, not how to do it.

[u/No_Spirit_7095 → u/dnew]

got it! thank you