Birdflock simulation

[mentalnils]

Hi, Im trying to have a flock of birds (around 2000 birds) fly up and over a camera and away in the distance. The camera is a tracked camera from a shoot so the angles are a bit tricky since they just imagined where the birds would fly. 
My issue as of now is that im using Find target nodes to direct the path of flight, but it seems that im having some issues with whenever one target tests true and another flow takes over. Mostly it seems that the pivot of the bird (actor node) seems to gradually move away from the center of the body of the bird. And the take over is very "jumpy".... Problem is that 
Does anyone know of any good tutorials on tyflow flock of birds setup? Or somewhere that explains in details about how several Find targets can take over an animated Actor without flipping it around etc...

  shot1_birds_v008.mov (Size: 6.48 MB / Downloads: 184)

[d4rk3lf]

Yeah.. totally got you... I also find "find target" somewhat not easy to control in this scenarios, although in other tasks, that operator is very useful.
What I personally do, in this type of tasks, is just not using Find Target.
I just use (spherical) Ty)Wind, with small negative value so it attracts particles, and once they reach destination, they won't go crazy, but they will just (smoothly) try to reach it again, and that is actually similar like behaving of the birds.
You can either manually animate that TyWind, or place it as path constraint on line, if it's easier to control it like that.

I also try to make it as simple as I can in the beginning.. meaning.. I won't use any birds, just an object in arrow shape (so I am sure my orientation works well), and my first force with TyWind, I won't add any turbulence noise, until I am 100% sure the birds are following the TyWind in nice and smooth way (more like a pack of mini spaceships), and only after that, I would add another force and introduce turbulence settings, and play with it, until it works.
And the beauty of it.. all can be done in single event's with just a handful of operators.

Hope this helps.

[mentalnils]

Thanks for the tip. Ill check it out.
I used a stand in object to make it go faster, but I never could see if it was rotatet correctly along its axis.. so it wasnt flying upside down etc. That was also an issue.

[dv2000]

Yeah.. totally got you... I also find  "find target"  somewhat not easy to control in this scenarios, although in other tasks, that operator is very useful.
What I personally do, in this type of tasks, is just not using Find Target.
I just use  (spherical) Ty)Wind, with small negative value so it attracts particles, and once they reach destination, they won't go crazy, but they will just (smoothly) try to reach it again, and that is actually similar like behaving of the birds.
You can either manually animate that TyWind, or place it as path constraint on line, if it's easier to control it like that.

I also try to make it as simple as I can in the beginning.. meaning.. I won't use any birds, just an object in arrow shape (so I am sure my orientation works well), and my first force with TyWind, I won't add any turbulence noise, until I am 100% sure the birds are following the TyWind in nice and smooth way (more like a pack of mini spaceships), and only after that, I would add another force and introduce turbulence settings, and play with it, until it works.
And the beauty of it.. all can be done in single event's with just a handful of operators.

Hope this helps.

Hi,
Do you have a sample scene ?  https://youtu.be/bvG4b47DebE?si=dMweUptqNwq178eJ

[dv2000]

I cannot birds go forward they even fly backwards.  How do you lock it their direction? Bird fly backwards