I am making a project right now where I need to make growing leaves.
It’s not a closup, so not too much detail is needed, but physics would be good to have to deform them.
I know it’s possible to make a branch with leaves and maybe enable cloth for them, but that is an option for few leaves, not thousand of them, so I want to do it with particles, but I just can’t figure out how to do it.
Well, it’s kind of possible, but not in a good way… I have attached a file where you can see my approach,
can you suggest something?
Thank you, but this doesn’t exactly solve the issue with gradient texture as scale controller. If you want to scale all leaves at once, yes, this would be an option.
Here’s an example that I think is doing what you are looking for. I used a cloud texture instead of a blend so that the leaves grow at different times on the branch. The “trick” is in animating the Brightness value of the texture over time.
Here is your own file, but with hair dynamics enabled, as you can see, it’s not working correctly, instead of deforming or at least rotating objects, it scales them in unnatural way.
This is quite a nice cheat and looks quite good, but nevertheless… it’s not correct.
If my object is moving, I would want leaves to react to that movement.
Well…the leaf object is deforming, yes, but particles are only copying the deformed mesh, cloth is not applied to every single leaf in particle system.
For realistic effect you want every leaf to react to its individual position and movement, because depending on it’s rotation, gravity pulls it down differently and if the leaf is on branch end, it reacts to it’s movement more, because speed with which it moves is faster. Don’t you see that?
Ok… I am just tired of this and don’t want to waist my time on something Blender just can’t do,
must adapt my work to what is possible… although that is kind of stupid in this case, because all the functionality kind of is there, but when you want to make something more than a cube test, no… it cant be done. This is starting to get really frustrating.
Well it’s a good thing your only wasting your own time…
Anyway for those who have been following this, here’s a new version of the file that I feel does a pretty good job of creating a dynamic branch / leaf effect within Blender. Of course it won’t meet the standards of the original poster, but that’s fine, as I understand that I must be stupid to be unable to immediately grasp exactly what he / she is trying to accomplish here.
This is why I rarely bother to help here any more, hope someone finds this of use
Hey, you misunderstood, I did not say nothing bad to you, I am referring to the situation I have, that the effect is just not possible because of technical dificulties, I appreciate your help, but I’m frustrated. Why do people always take things so personally when someone critiques Blender… ? I am just pointing out the flaw, that’s all, and not because I would want to make fun of Blender, NO, I love Blender, but in moments like this I must face the reality, it just can’t do everything as some want to believe. And with “some” I don’t necessarily talk about you, Pappy, ok? Peace.
Do youreally also think I said something offensive to him? If so, sorry, but I really don’t think so. Also english is not my native language and maybe I just can’t always write exactly wat and how I want, so double sorry about that, but still, a problem exists and you can’t deny it, can you?
Sometimes it helps if someone just says - hey, man, sorry, but that really is not possible. That’s it.
Well, I have seen this and I know how to make that. They have used bones and animated manually every leaf, which is absolutely ok, if you must make closups in such detail and have control over every part of object.
Another thing, there is no place in that animation where object would start growth from zero. Everything kind of is allready there, only changes scale and form. But it is a great animation, no doubt about that! But really, don’t tell me that everything is possible, when it’s clear that it’s not.
