Maeko Flock - Starling Bird Murmuration

A living murmuration for your sky, completely free.

Maeko Flock is one component and a realistic painterly starling. Drop it in, press play, and hundreds of birds gather into a single breathing cloud that swirls, stretches, scatters, and settles like the real thing.

The bird is a European starling rendered in a realistic painterly style, iridescent greens and purples, pale speckles, soft feather detail. Just 200 triangles per bird, rigged, with flap and glide animations. It reads as a true bird up close and as living smoke in the hundreds. A 500 bird murmuration costs you around 100,000 triangles, about what one detailed prop would.

WHAT THE FLOCK DOES

• Calm Swirl, the default murmuration, tracing a figure eight, racetrack, or circle around its anchor
• Hover, parking the flock tight and dense over a landmark
• Panic, scattering the birds climbing and flapping hard, then settling on their own
• Dive Attack, orbiting a target while birds take turns striking at it
• Patrol routes, flying between any number of waypoints, looping forever
• Spawn and despawn on a trigger zone, a timer, a finished route, or from your own script, with birds streaming in from the horizon and leaving the same way

THE DETAILS THAT SELL IT

• One dense blob that grows with your bird count, so 500 birds fill more sky than 100
• Liquid stretch, the ball elongating as it travels and rounding up as it slows
• Breathing, swaying, and sharp little twitches
• Lone scouts that peel off ahead or beside the flock, then sprint home
• Bounding flight, mixing flap bursts with natural glides, speed synced per bird
• Procedural head stabilization, keeping each bird's head level as its body pitches
• Banking into turns, obstacle avoidance, and a ground floor so birds never sink into terrain
• A 3D audio slot: drop in any looping bird chatter and it pans, fades, and dopplers from the center of the flock

WHAT IS INCLUDED

• Painterly style starling: FBX, albedo, normal map, material, prefab
• Rig with Maeko_Fly and Maeko_Glide animations
• MaekoFlock component, fully documented
• Two demo scenes: a studio showcase of the bird, and a simulation room that tours every feature by itself
• Illustrated PDF documentation and a README

Unity 6, URP. No dependencies.

BUILT FOR MAEKO SKY

Screenshots and video show Maeko Sky, plus third-party trees and terrain. None of these are included in this package, they are for display purposes only. Maeko Flock contains the starling, its animations, and the flock component.

This asset is free and always will be. If something is broken or confusing, please email me first and I will fix it fast. And if the flock earns a place in your project, an honest review helps a small studio more than you know!

[email protected]