Flight of the fireflies in Blender 2.8

In this video we will be creating more fireflies. With the help of the Boid Particle system and a bit of tracking we can easily create a surreal fantasy scene. 

We have done tracking and have used boids in the past, though there are some differences. 

I am using Blender 2.8 (release candidate 3) though this tutorial can be done in previous versions (there may be some differences). If you want to download blender 2.8 then click here.

Tracking the shot was not too difficult and considering the motion of the camera, I only added 10 tracking markers. 

If you are using your own background footage then be sure to remember the focal length that you shot in. 

The background footage I used was downloaded (download here) so I had to let blender work out what my focal length should be. 

Once we are happy with the Average solve error, we can then setup our 3d scene. 

With the click of a single button, Blender has set up our 3d view along with creating the necessary nodes that we need to compose the shot. 

In this example I remove the background layer (but you may want to keep it and have reflections). 

Then using a particle system, we change a few settings to get the effect that we are looking for. 

When it comes to rendering, you can render with either Cycles or Eevee. I decided to render with both. I'm not sure if it's a bug but when we activate motion blur in Eevee it doesn't seem to work. 

One of the benefits of rendering with Eevee is the Speed. It took me  about 1 hr and 15 mins for Cycles to render this whole animation. Whereas Eevee took only 20 mins. 

I also considered adding a light cast to the water but in the end I decided that the Glow from the flies probably wouldn't reach the water. 

If you did want a reflection in the water, you could add a mix node and connect the render layers to that mix node. Then add a translate node and move the position of the new fireflies to be below the original fireflies (I would also add a scale node and scale them on the Y axis a little). Then play around with the blend mode and factor to get something that you like.

You can then add your color grading and finalize your shot.

Hopefully you enjoyed this video and as always, 

Thanks for watching!..