I guess putting a skeleton in the tree, and then attaching all the softbodies to it would help as well. Those ideas are great, I'll start some tests! But is there a way to replace the 'flower' or 'bud', in PaintFX into a different object via some sort of MEL technique? If I could do that, than I could save the time on going the soft body poly route, as the animation is inherent. -=Ralph=-