Rustling Leaves

Physically simulated leaves: falling leaves, leaf piles you can wade through, rake and blow away, gusts, whirlwinds and leaf tools.

Leaf litter under the trees and leaves drifting on the water

Features

• Falling leaves: leaves let go of the underside and open sides of tree crowns and come down like real leaves - most flutter and glide in pendulum swings (some in wide, lazy arcs), others tumble about their long axis and slide off sideways.
• A real forest floor: leaves pile up in layers - a patchy carpet under the trees with the ground showing through, small drifts against walls and trunks, and once in a while a leaf pile. Thin litter is a layer of loose leaves, deep piles get a solid body under them. Piles slump to a natural angle of repose and leaves slide down their sides. The ground cover is saved with your world (per server in multiplayer), so piles stay where they are.
• Wade through piles: the leaves under your feet are pressed down and stay, part of the pile is pushed aside with every step and leaves a trail, some leaves skid over the ground and a few fly up after you (more when running). Sneaking over a thin carpet leaves it untouched. Jump into a pile and it splashes up around you. Mobs, animals, minecarts and arrows stir leaves too, with a soft rustle.
• Leaves behave like a granular material: piles settle into round cones, leaves trickle down slopes, fill hollows, ditches and cauldrons up to the rim and run over the edge.
• Leaf tools (when the mod is also on the server):
  • Leaf Blower - hold right click to blow a cone of air: it clears paths through the litter, heaps the leaves up where the air dies down, throws loose leaves into the air and nudges items and mobs.
  • Leaf Bag - hold right click to suck leaves up (they fly into the bag), sneak + hold right click to pour them out in a stream - fill a hole, heap a pile, shower a friend. Holds 1000 leaves; use it on a composter to turn every 32 leaves into a layer of compost.
  • Autumn Bomb - a throwable bundle of leaves that bursts into a swirling cloud of autumn leaves.
  • Staff of Winds - right click to raise a leaf whirlwind where you look, sneak + right click to send a squall rolling ahead of you.
• Rake leaves into piles: hold right click with a hoe or shovel on leaf litter to sweep the leaves around that spot together (it does not till the ground or make a path while there are leaves).
• Wind you can see: gust waves sweep across the forest and skitter loose leaves over the ground until they pile up against obstacles; squalls - strong gust fronts - roll through and strip a band of trees at once; leaf whirlwinds wander over open ground, suck up the litter and spin it up in a swirling column. Rain makes leaves wet and heavy, thunderstorms tear them off the trees.
• Wind charges and explosions push a pulse of air through the leaves: a ring of wind that rushes outwards and dies down, a rising column in the middle (and a swirl for wind charges). Leaves ride it out, get lifted, flutter down again; some just hop and fall back where they lay.
• Breaking or decaying leaves releases a burst of leaves; when the block under litter disappears, the litter falls, and a block placed on litter ends up with the leaves on top. Leaves on water stick flat to the surface and darken as they soak; they drift with the current (and down waterfalls), turn along the flow and spin where it swirls, gather into rafts and along the banks, get pushed under where water pours onto them, and finally sink swaying to the bottom. They burn in lava.
• Colors match the tree in every biome (also modded trees), with a share of autumn yellows, oranges and reds; litter on the ground looks a bit more aged. Oak, birch, spruce and cherry trees drop different shapes.
• Built for huge numbers of leaves: lying leaves are stored as stacks per quarter block and only the visible ones are drawn from cached GPU meshes - a pile of thousands of leaves costs a few hundred quads. Far away the litter switches to a simplified layer (one mesh per chunk), so the forest floor stays visible out to the render distance without leaves popping in; only moving leaves are simulated in full, and everything that pushes leaves finds them through a spatial grid. The F3 screen shows the current numbers.
• Works on any server: the leaves, piles, wind and raking are client-side and work even on vanilla servers. Installed on the server too, the mod adds the leaf tools, and everyone sees each other's tools at work.

Configuration

Everything can be tuned in the in-game config screen: number of leaves, fall rate, radius, time on the ground, carpet thickness, leaf size, autumn colors, wind, squalls and whirlwinds, footstep and explosion strength, raking, rustle volume.

Compatibility

• Shader packs (Iris, Oculus): falling leaves and the litter are drawn with the pack's terrain program, so they are lit and shaded like the blocks around them. Switching a pack on or off in game rebuilds the leaf meshes.
• Sodium works.

Requirements

NeoForge 1.21.1. The leaves work client-side on any server; install the mod on the server too for the leaf tools.

Screenshots

A leaf pile you can wade through, rake and blow away

Falling leaves in a birch forest at night

Credits

Made by Pocky. Source code: GitHub

More mods by Pocky

Holy Staff - A holy staff with three healing skills, aim previews and flying heal numbers. (source)

Lumen Rigs - Aimable spotlights, floodlights, searchlights and soft panels with colored light and visible beams. (source)

Neon Glowsticks - Throwable glowsticks that bounce, roll and light up the dark with colored light. (source)

Petrichor: Rain & Storms - Realistic rain and storms: rain types, puddles, runoff and drips, branching lightning with delayed thunder. (source)

Rancher's Vacpack - A Slime Rancher inspired vacuum gun: suck up items and small mobs, store them in a tank and shoot them back out. (source)