link to video 1mb mp4
At the moment I have 2 leaves keyframed but I want at least a dozen. I fear trying to use the particle system will be several days of wasted time because I can never get that thing to behave in the manner I want. But manually animating even 2 more leaves will take me a long time too. 
Is it possible to code the movement of objects in Blender? What Iām considering at the moment is re-using this old code I wrote - https://www.khanacademy.org/computer-programming/spin-off-of-project-make-it-rain/5372088720424960 - with pictures of leaves and just recording that animation from my screen and then use it as an image sequence as an alpha in Blender. But it would be nice if I could program the location of my leaf objects in Blender the same way.
Use animation node for this.
Best option in my view
Hey thinsoldier,
Not sure youāre still working with this. For mograph thereās a couple ways I know can work well for this that are either particles, like you mentioned, or having multiple leaf objects follow several nurbs paths (using the follow path object constraint.
With the particles, you can do something similar, where the particles follow a path. Itās not too difficult to at least get started on, but def more geared towards if you want a few dozen or hundreds of leaves. Hereās a vid I grabbed off the web for doing that:
The first concept would be good if you just want to control a handful of objects. Youād add a nurbs path, then on your object, add the follow path constraint, selecting the path as the target. Maybe check the āFollow Curveā option if desired. Then youād simply keyframe the āOffsetā slider, maybe keyframe the leaf rotating too or something, whatever.
Hope that gives you some ideas for this or future fun!
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Donāt forget you can also animate the Curves using Hook Modifiers. I would probably use Bezier curves rather than NURBs for this though. You can then have many leaves following the same path object, but they take different apparent tracks because the curve alters.
Cheers, Clock.
