Wind In Trees

[ross2503]

I'm learning to animate in Maya and I'm trying to create my first animation. What is the simplest yet fairly realistic way to create the effect of strong wind/hurricane blowing trees and branches? I've created the trees by painting them. I've converted the paint to polygons to be able select parts. I've been selecting faces and moving individual elements, making the trunk bow to the right etc, keyframing each movement. but it's so tedious and the result is quite poor.

Any suggestions please? (bare in mind I'm a newcomer to Maya!)

Thanks
Mike

[jason-howey]

you can keep the trees as paint fx. there's setting in the paint fx to do procedural turbulence animation that would probably do the trick. I can't remember off hand what tab its under, but there are some example brushes that are animated that you could look at for reference.
good luck!
Jason

[rollie]

Hmmm don't know much on animating wind or a more efficient way to make the leaves without high poly, but you should look into IK handles and jointing the trees so they bend in heavy winds. Joints will move all faces that it is bound to, and you can paint how much pressure/effect they have on the model.