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Stylized Tree wind animation for UE5

This was my first experiment with trying to create wind animation for stylized trees in Unreal Engine. There are lots of tutorials out there that are amazing, but none of them looked exactly like I wanted and I was too stubborn to settle for "close enough."

This is not my area of expertise, but after a lot of study, experiments, and trial-and-error, I'm very happy with the results I have so far!

Being able to adjust the color in-engine is one of the many options I created for the shader. Most of the options are for fine-tuning the animation, but you can change the color, the leaf pattern texture, etc.

The main shader I'm showing is for the leaves, but the trunk has its own much simpler shader (just the vertex animation, and the ability to swap out textures).

The main shader I'm showing is for the leaves, but the trunk has its own much simpler shader (just the vertex animation, and the ability to swap out textures).

Vertex Colors for the animation. The normals have also been adjusted for a better appearance.

Vertex Colors for the animation. The normals have also been adjusted for a better appearance.

Shader network includes an area for color, a section for hiding edge planes (with dithering), vertex animation, and two different types of UV animation that I ended up combining together.

Shader network includes an area for color, a section for hiding edge planes (with dithering), vertex animation, and two different types of UV animation that I ended up combining together.