Fly Swarm

Ok, so now I'm working on creating a swarm of flies for the practicum film. I've been reading up on the Crowd simulation in the book 3ds max Animation with Biped by Michele Bousquet. I opted for the crowd simulation approach because I figured I'd need a bit more control over the delegates (the members of the crowd) than a particle system would probably allow me... although Particle Flow probably would have also been a viable solution. This route, however, forced me to start learning crowd simulation, which I'm sure will be immensely useful.

I've also researched videos of flies on YouTube. Turns out, there is not that much user posted video of flies. I guess most people are not that interested in filming flies. I was mostly interested in the movement of the insect once it settles on a surface.

I wanted to break it down into several movements that I could assign the delegates. For example, flies tend to sit in place, rub their front legs together, or rapidly dart across a surface for several inches.

Here are the clips I found (the clip with the trained flies is insane):