Dry leaves

Hi there! Despite knowing Blender for years I only use it occasionally, so I’m technically a newbie.

I’m working on a leaf node setup that will allow me to control some settings like withering and deformation. It’s nothing impressive, I’m just lazy and I refuse to sink time creating different meshes to do such small variations when Blender can do that for me. I’d rather have something I can re-purpose for multiple leaves and projects and only create new meshes for truly expressive variations like true curling.

The result so far:


It’s a single leaf model, subdivided twice to keep it quick for now. I need to clean up and optimize the node setup, but I’m fairly happy with the outcome, it looks promising. I’m having more trouble with the particle system at the moment. I never had to bother with particles intersections before, so I’ll have to figure it out. Unfortunately the leaves displacement was done through the node so I doubt it’s possible to avoid intersections in this case.

I also need to figure how seed the musgrave texture I’m using to control the crumpling/withering (newbie, remember!) and maybe how make leaves sit on the ground more naturally. I don’t like how weightless they look right now.

For a ‘newbie’ its a great render! looks quite realistic!
It would be interesting to see how it looks in bright light (with sharper shadow).

If would be great if you post more details about the workflow.