swaying trees and falling leaves?

Lokitoes

Hi all,

I'm wanting to make a scene that looks like the camera is looking up into a forest canopy from below. Things need to sway around a bit, as realistically as possible, and now and then a leaf needs to fall towards the camera (so starting small and getting bigger due to the perspective) also in a realistic way - eg. being blown about by the wind. I really don't know where to start with making trees and leaves look like they're swaying realistically. I'm thinking each section/leaf/branch needs to be separate so that they can move slightly and independently. Does anyone have any suggestions, comments, code, experiences?

Cheers,
Lokitoes

PixelPun

If I was doing this I think I would start with just one branch and constrain the movements to a certain area of the scene, then copy that actor and play with the attributes to get different movements in another location in the scene. The leaves could be a particle effect that enlarges as they move towards the camera. I've been away from GS for about a year now so its hard for me to go into more detail, it can be done for sure.. just going to take some time. I would though start with just one branch or tree and get that working and moving in a realistic way then move on to the others by copying and pasting the actor.

Hope you get it worked out, sounds like a neat scene!

Hopscotch

@Lokitoes, maybe these help.

@Socks' thread here may help: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/75220/fast-constrain-linkmachine-v2/p1

and

@RThurman's entry here : http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/comment/419821#Comment_419821

Lokitoes

Thanks guys I'll have a look at these. @Hopscotch these look good - the chain relationship sounds like a good idea. There are also some interesting sounding bits of code in that code dump thread about falling leaves through the code is old and I can't seem to open it in current version of GS.

Yes it is the tinkering with the constrain actor behavior in order to get it looking realistic that I'm dreading hah.