Falling leaves animation

Question

quite new to Blender and i am doing a falling leaves simulation by using a particle system, everything is fine beside when the particles hit a surface plane with collision enabled, i have set the particles to die when hit and to render but i’m having an hard time to make them lay down properly, as soon as they hit it they will stay in place with the wrong rotation, any way to get around this?

i tried making instances of particles then using cloth modifier with some turbolence works pretty well but creates another major problem of not being a particle system anymore, just those instances of mesh falling and that’s it while i want to achieve a procedural animation of for example a minute

Would appreciate any suggestion or help

Answer 1

Particle collision cannot follow the shape of the particle, only a basic sphere. By setting the particles to die when they touch the surface, you are telling them to freeze in position, but the only other option is that they go through or bounce off the surface, which is even worse.

As for how to get the effect you want, it depends on whether or not you need to see the leaves stacking on the ground. If you don’t, I would just not have a ground plane. If you do, that’s a tough one. The best looking way I know of is to create all the leaves with particles, and then make instances real with all of them being a rigid or cloth body, and then play them falling. I vaguely remember that doing this can make them all have the position of the starting plane for some reason, so you may have to use randomized transform to get them spread out vertically again. You could cheat in a long distance shot by using dynamic paint to stamp the shape of the leaf on the ground somehow, maybe with a second hair particle system on the ground itself that puts a fallen leaf wherever one landed, but it won’t look good up close.