Paper V2-HELP-PLEASE.blend (2.9 MB) I’m trying to have soft body paper objects float down continuously from an emitter and behave like slow falling paper.
The issue I am having is once I turn on a soft body, my emitter expands over time and I would like it not to do that.
Please have a look at my simple file setup with an emitter and a collection of soft body pages. Feel free to use my file in your projects if you do not mind the expansion of the emitter.
Thank you.
I think I might be on to a solution. Is the emission expanding because the collection of soft body objects that are being emitted are themselves moving out? If so is there a way to keep the soft body objects in the collection from being effected by forces/staying still but have the ones being emitted move like paper falling?
You’re on the right track with your explanation. What’s happening is that particles, not objects, are being emitted. When a particle is rendered, the cloth object (as it looks at that time) is rendered in it’s place. Over time the cloth faces flutter away from their objects origin and so when drawn by a particle the cloth faces are drawn away from the particle’s position.
I’m not sure how you could keep the cloth faces near the cloth origin without losing the flexing of the paper at the same time.
This video may be helpful to you, it shows a similar effect but with falling leaves.
Blender 2.72 Tutorial - Falling Leaves
(Flexing of the paper can also be added with shape keys.)
Thank you so much @AlanT for your detailed explanation. I like the way cloth and soft bodies look so real when they fall or are affected by forces it is hard and time-intensive to fake that. That being said the results in the video you shared using shape keys looked really convincing. I didn’t know about shape keys so thank you for that also. Having fun learning Blender!!! Super grateful that you replied. 
Mystery solved!!!