Thank you so much!
And yes, I totally understand about the reference resolution. I was having trouble with it, too!
I will definitely look at that distortion shader - that looks like exactly what I need! Interesting that it doesn’t seem to be in the shader map, though. I would expect that to be related to the “wiggle” that he has in the UV animation portion. The distortion plus a subtle rotation around a corner pivot makes sense.
I do think he’s using a world noise type texture - the 80 Level article only mentions using vector colors for the branches/sway (I should have linked this in my first post: Stylized Nature: Vegetation, Animation, Shaders).
I replicated what you have here for the shader nodes - and I don’t get any errors, which is a great sign! But I’m also no longer getting any movement at all. The world noise section should now be driving it instead of the time node, so perhaps there’s something still off in there, or that I’m supposed to add to the level to make it work? I made sure to turn everything on in my material instance. Or should the time node still be there somewhere? (“playing” the level also didn’t make it go).
Interesting that the simplex noise doesn’t work down in the global noise portion - I just put a noise texture in for now.
I’m further than I was! Any progress I can get makes me happy!
EDIT: Following your distortion suggestion, I was able to find this post which helped me to get this result:
Getting there! I think if I did a vertex color to have the effect be stronger on one side than the other, and then perhaps add in the rotation, I might have that part solved! Then I just have to work out the global noise/wind part to drive the speed variation, and the branch sway… well, I guess I still have a ways to go, but nearly there with the part I was most stumped on at least!