Hey thanks. That seems to be working.

One odd thing though:
I preanimated them to open up over time, saved as vob's into my collection, added the collection, then in the material populated them as objects into the ecosystem.

That works, but strangly the animation is backwards. They start off normal then shrink and fold up over time.
I guess I'll have to preanimate them backwards and that should fix it. Strange though, ha.

I'm also just getting all red color so I suppose I'll need to save a few with different colors also.

It's workable though.

//edit:
DOHHH!
I pre-animated them backwards. So it 'is' working right after all. My bad.

Thanks again. :)