Hello everyone,

Here I was, trying to make for my self a fake mild wind that would wave the leafs of the trees. But I got my self a problem, that I cannot overcome. When I deform leafs they swing some what good, but their center is also deformed and moves from one place to another. I was trying to devise a way of muting the center, but to no avail. If I use “if” node like I did to mute trunk from leafs the effect will get too hard.. I need some weighted solution to to partially effect the leafs at the roots an fully effect them at their tips.

The problem with my current situation is that I cannot use anything except the tree mesh it self and clusters that are created (or make a couple of cluster my self). I may not use any additional objects and I cannot paint weights either.

This palm is only a quick example I made to find solution.. The actual trees will be ported from another software and they will be a lot more complex. I will need to seed them over a planes to make a forest.

Anyways. My idea was to some how create a center (for example via a cluster point)from which I would calculate a sort of weakening weight (similar to effect to modulate by null compound)but this weight should gradually disable the effect of turbulize the closer it gets to the center. I thought that this way I could not only fate swinging leafs, but also swinging trunk.. The effects would be very subtle but I think it could be a solution..

So, could anyone help me solve this problem? Or at least point me to the right path?
I would be veeeeeery grateful!

exanju

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i would use weightmap, but as this is no solution for you, i would go on with the point method.
define the center of the leaves. (get point position -> get set average). then use a rescale as an input for the turbulences variance. the rescale is feeded by the distance to the centerpoint… so the farer away from the center the higher is the turbulence effect.

This is actually quite simple - all you need to do is make a property weightmap on the leaves, leave it empty - i.e. no weights, then using the node get closest location on geometry, test the distance of the point from the branches - you can use this with simple maths to write the weights into the weight map, then use this weight map to drive the turbulance!  If you do not come right with this - let me know sandy(dot)sutherland(at)triggerfish(dot)co(dot)za and I will do a little example for you!

S.