Making Branches on a tree sway in the wind ???

[andy gee]

Hi Everybody

I'll Get striaght to the point

I am trying to make the els=aves on my trees sway in the wind???

I know that i have to use wind and gravity emitters. But my knowledge of these is of NOVICE status.

Was wondering does anybody know how to do this of if anybody can tell me a a Basic wind and gravity tutorial i can see

if anybody can then that would great !!!

Cheers Andy Gee !!!:confused: :D

[Dodgy]

Why not use some fractal noise with a falloff in the object texture displacement? Simple and effective, or use a bend deformer with and animated handle to make the tree sway?

[head worm]

Hi there,

Here is a rather sexy solution to this problem, based on the method the last post suggests, but a little more controllable than using simple falloff.

You basically use a Displacement map located under Object Properties > Deform, but you use a simple UV map as an alpha layer on top of your main deforming layer - which would probably be a fractal noise or turbulence.

The idea is that you model your tree and create a basic UV map with the geometry you want to sway the most at the top of your UV grid (V values around 0) and the parts you want to sway the least at the bottom (V values of around 100%).

Then you simply apply a vertical gradient image map as an alpha layer in the Displacement channel mapped to the UV map you created for your tree model. The gradient would be white at the top, fading to black at the bottom and you can shape it any way you want in Photoshop.

You can then control things by altering UV map or the gradient image, which parts of your tree are allowed to be swayed by the underlying Disp map and which aren't, creating a very nicely detailed effect.

Cheers

Head Worm
www.the-worms-of-art.com