Is there a way to animate leaves and branches within UE? Without the need for other DCCs?
The leaves are not thin poly planes. They are thick cartoony leaves with modeled branches.
Would be nice if there is a UE way to animate the branches slightly and animate the leaves with more flicker. Yet still keep the leaves attached to the branches.
In other DCC’s, I would vertex paint the leaves so they stay on the branch. Then apply a wind effect. The darker painted vertex wood would not move much and the whitish vertex painted leaves would more more.
Is this possible in UE? Or is there a better way in UE?
Many of the “dynamic foliage” and “terrain grass meshes” that you can find on the Marketplace, do this.
Generally, they perturb the vertex location with some volume noise function, and perturb it slightly more the further it is from the origin, to simulate wider shaking further out on branches and such.
Also, you’ll typically want the nosie to be quite coarse, because a blade of grass bends evenly, it doesn’t wiggle around
Sometimes, you’ll get the best effects if you tech up the art a little bit with extra vertex parameters like “how much to animate” or "which direction is it attached in, so it shouldn’t move in that direction. But, in general, wind and player movement animations are typically done procedurally in a shader, not using DCC tool animations.
