The animation is using particles along a path with all the low poly shapes. There are actually 10 microbes (viruses) in the scene, and of course the red and white blood cells. The entire scene, with all the models, contains roughly 200k polygons total. That includes all 12 models as well as the environment. All textures were painted by hand in 3dCoat using the 3dcoat app link to Blender. Models were created entirely in Blender with regular modeling techniques and sculpting, then retopologized inside Blender, and then normal maps were baked to the low poly meshes from the high res objects.
Each frame took only around 2.5 seconds per frame using an Nvidia RTX 2070 GPU with quite a bit of render effects active. This scene uses Occlusion, bloom, SSS, volumetric fog, and screen-space reflections. I know it’s hard to tell if there’s any AO, but take my word if I turn it off it’s a huge difference. There are two area lights and one point light also in the scene, but I have shadows turned off for all but one of the lights.