How to Make a Polygon Tree Sway in Wind....
 

Hello everyone,

I have a polygon tree, that has fruit on it, and would like to simulate the type of wind animation that is built into PaintFX for its tubes/trees. Wind is important for this porject as this apple tree is being mixed with windy video footage of other apple trees. Here's my strategy to make it animate properly:

1. Make the tree a softbody, then paint goal weights along all the branches so that the outtermost parts of the branches are affected by the wind and bend more than the inner parts

2. Than I would have to use some sort of combination of fields (such as Air, Gravity and Turbulence) to create the actual wind to affect the goals and animate the tree.

Now I understand the "concept" of how to do this, but I do not have very much experience with using goals, painting weights/clusters (although I do have a tablet), or creating an affective combination of fields that looks anywhere near as realistic as the animation PaintFX provides built in. Don't get me wrong, I do know where all of these features are, and have got some good results in the past, but not as advanced as this, and I'm afraid I've hit a wall. If anyone, knows how to affecitivley create a wind simulation on a poly tree, and can elaborate on how to execute my strategy, or if you have a better one, please let me know! :)

Thanks in advance,

-=Ralph=-

P.S. I have a similar question on this forum about adding fruit to a PaintFX tree with the wind already animated. I would prefer to do the tree that way as the animation looks solid, and it's easier to fine tune the results. Check that post out as well:
http://forums.simplymaya.com/showthr...&threadid=9574

you can also put a lattice around it and make is sway that way as well....

PERFECT idea Kurt!

Thanks for the idea Kurt!

I assume a skeleton with the 'weighted' lattices attached as soft bodies would work well then, for manually keyframing and saving CPU processing time (due to less points to calculate on the lattice as opposed to using the actual model for the soft body).

My question now is, if I don't use a skeleton or do manually keyframing, and want the whole windy tree to be automated by dynamic systems, what settings would I use to create the wind effect with Air and Turbulence, or whatever other fields, on this soft-body lattice tree?

-=Ralph=-