Is it possible to apply wind force to other objects besides trees? David

No. :-P You can apply directional force and key frame the intensity over time but the objects won't behave like the trees do unless you build them especially to respond to the force. Mark

Um just out of curiosity, how would one build them to respond to force? IF it is easy, I might try it if not, I will find another way (maybe use Poser hair to simulate long grass). Thanks Mark. Did you have a nice Christmas or non specific holiday of your choice? David

Hi David, Yes, Christmas was great - thanks for asking. Building objects for wind usually involves adding bones to them. It's not ideal but you can get it work. I haven't tried grass before. A single blade wouldn't be a problem but a field might be. A coupld of years ago, Wayne Kilgore did a great example with Anything Grows using an animated texture map to "blow" the grass. In his example, a bumble bee was flying low over grass blowing it down as it moved. So, there are other options. Mark

Oh, thats how he did it - that makes sense! I'll play around with animated maps... might be asking for help ; )

Here is an example of a possible wind force I made a quick movie in Flash, a black odd-shaped oval (might lend to having soft edges...) moving across the movie screen, saved it as quicktime movie. In Carrara, used AnythingGrows - took way too long to figure it out : ( but did, I think. In Carrara, add a plane, add AG on plane, add the movie as a Color shader to the plane - hide the plane, in AG settings, at the beginning of your animation make sure the settings don't change from beginining to end, else all the grass will move. Set the x and y wiggles to the shader containing the movie in color channel. Make sure to key frame the beginning of the movie shader - start at start, and advance the little preview movie to the end at the end of the animation. Also... there must be bend in the grass... play around with it. It took me the better part of 2 hours to get it to work, and I even got one to work, then 1 hour later, figured out how I did it. The link is to a test render. I imagine you could use any kind of movie - waves, some moving contrasting color, etc. to create movement in the wiggle.

I think I just hijacked this thread, sorry. I was excited by the possibilities Pedrith. Here is a new ship and grass render movie. It is smoother than the last, still needs to catch up with the grass.