In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we do something a bit different a create a simple scene of blowing leaves. This technique makes good use of alpha mapped leaves, particle systems and a particle instance modifier to achieve the result.
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29 Responses to “Creating a Scene of Blowing Leaves”Leave a Comment
Hi Jonathon
I’m having a tiny problem in that my particles are clumped in the center of the particle plane rather than being dispersed across the plane as your’s are. I have gone through the first twelve minutes trying to see the step that I have missed and I’m not finding it. Love your tutorials you have been a great help in my Blender adventure. Thanks
Thanks for particle instance. You should try to enable shadeless to your groundplane to fix the square shadows.
Un bon tutoriel… comme toute les autres fois !
bonne continuation !
Great tut.
I have learned new tricks and ways to control particles + way to texture objects.
thanks
cool i just been into some project with falling leaves
Now i can add some leaves blowing around my keyed main actor ….great tutorial, nice intro on the physics force fields there:)
Thanks a lot for your tutorials and best regards from Berlin!
Thank you for teaching us all that stuff. I could call it ‘awesome’, but I think your work is more than that, by far. Thx.
Regards
Edi
Thanks Jonathon,
I was looking for a way to do dupliverts in 2.5, Particle Instance is just what I was looking for.
@everyone else.
you can also add an image plane by enabling the “Planes from Image” add-on within the preferences/add ons. Once enabled you will be able to Shift A/ Mesh/ imageplanes.
(you’ll still need to go to the texture panel after and check – premultiply, check Alpha – influence 1.00 and lastly go to the materials and set transparency and spec to 0)
Also the Wind option can now be added from the Shift A menu directly by choosing Force Field / wind
hope this is helpful,
this blowing leaves 2.5 tut is nice
many little tricks given for tranps leaves ect.
but that reminded me of other type of tut that might be fun to know how to
1 – Blowing snow flakes (sand , rain and dust)
one with simple wind
one with some vortex of snow flakes may be
2 – another tut that might be interesting would be how to use the keyed
particule system – not many tut around on that one
Thanks & keep up the nice work on intro to 2.5 and blender
happy 2.5
@Comeinandburn: You can still duplivert. It’s under the objects panel. It’s just called duplication now.
thanks! I just tried to get it to work but it didn’t do what I expected. I do think that your particle instance example is much more flexible however.
Realy good tutt! Thx. More 2.5 particles tutorial will be a sweet thing!
I agree totally!
Well that was kind of disappointing. Will there be a follow up to this on how to fix the problem with the shadows?
Nice tut. What version of Blender are you using? It’s not 2.49 yea?
FYI: I think if you turn on transparent shadows for the ground plane it will receive the alpha map from the texture as well.
Hi, I had a problem (probably a bug), well the wind only works when I playback after I change a single setting at particle emitter but I can only playback once with wind or else the wind do nothing. And another thing is that blender crashed so I opened my finished blender file but now everything is wrong, all leaves moves slow like they were in space and almost take no effect from the wind and gravity.
Jonathon. Great tutorial as always, problems and all. I don’t mind the problems because you make me feel that I am sitting next to an expert trying to figure this out for the first time – and seeing you work through issues is instructive.
Question about the alpha and the images, if you have a second.
Do you need to have separated alpha and image for the leaves? Couldn’t you have combined the two images in photoshop or whatever and had a png or tga and save some hassle? Or do you have to do it separately for this effect?
thanks
When I add the particle instance modifier to my leaf object and select the emitter plane in the object box, my leaf objects are shown off to the side of the emitter plane out in space. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong here?
Thanks,
Aaron
I’m not positive but I think it may be due to your object centers, the instance and original particle emitter, having different locations. Try centering them both at the origin and see if that helps.
-Jonathan
Oops sorry to have accidently replied to your post twokids. It was meant to be a new submission.
What I did was imported an obj from another file, which is the ground plane for my leaves. I used the origin button to reset the origin to the center of the object. This seems to be causing a problem.
I got it. It seems that no matter where my emitter plane is in 3d space, my leaf objects have to be greated at 0,0,0 for them to place properly on the emitter plane.
Very good tutorial. Only a question: I tried to use the Ambient Occlusion to render the scene and the shadows of the leaves appeared as square on the ground. How avoid this? Thank you so much!
OK I have a question. I get to the wind part but the wind just pushes a few of the leaves straight up and the rest stay on the ground!!!! >:\
Did anyone find a soluyion for the square shadows ? cause i have same problem in one of my own projects
Be sure to set the material that is receiving shadows to “Receive Transparent”.
-Jonathan
I have that on, i have all your setting and “receive transparent” but with the same square shadows as you had in video.
I dont know if its because i dont have a ground plane, but multiple leaf planes, so the shadows fall on them.
I got similar problem as FXstudios99, leaves falling to the ground (wind not move they). After they hit the ground winnd just pushes a few of the leaves straight up and the rest stay on the ground.
thx. for tutorial
Is there maybe any tutorial about how to animate this?
Bradley
Hey Johnathan,
Great tutorial! I’m using your tuts to help me with my logo animatics with blowing paper. however i’m using cycles instead of internal renderer, and when i use the particle instance the texture/material doesnt render! can you give me tips on how to show this?