Animating wind in Spritekit?

Question

Is there a way to animate wind for certain game objects?

For example, branches of trees should gently move, like there's a breeze in game. Not gameplay, more like a special background effect.

If it's not possible in code, what would be the best way to create proper sprite images?

Answer 1

I see a few options to actually achieve that Wind Effect.

1. SKFieldNode, It allows you to actually apply physics effects to nodes. And if you want real tree branches that can move based on the physics, you should combine SKFieldNode with SKPhysicsJoint. When you combine those two you can actually create indepedent Branch Nodes to receive some kind of force to simulate a wind effect. To understand what you can do with SKPhysicsJoint, check out this guide. This solution can get really complex and hard to achieve with superficial understanding of SpriteKit Engine, but you can create an amazing effect using it. Personally, I would not recommend if you have deadlines to attend, physics always get buggy if you lose your grasp on what you are doing, you may invest a lot of time trying to achieve this using physics.
2. Create different animation of your tree responding to wind movement and control which animation frame you should use at that specif case. I Would highly recommend this one, because you will have control over what is going on with you tree and people that play games don't pay that much attention to what is going on with background, altho is a good thing to think about it from the game experience.
3. Create your tree textures and change the anchor point to be at the place you want the effect to be more effective and responsive. The farthest the coordinate in the node is from the anchor points coordinate, less effect from your SKAction it will get.

Sorry for my English, is not my native language.