The much requested particle node is starting to take shape! Right now, it's Cycles-only, but developer Lukas hints that a Blender-internal version should be possible as well.
Lukas writes:
This has been a frequently requested feature: To be able to control shader parameter over the lifetime of particles.
A common use case for this is fading out particles toward the end of their life (or the opposite: prevent them from popping into view suddenly by smoothly increasing their opacity).
The only way to achieve this effect until now is to use texture in combination with “Particle” coordinates (which encode the particle age as the U texture coordinate). However, this is clumsy and of limited use for fading out (since particle total lifetimes can vary). Also it only works with billboard and halo rendering, but not object or group instancing.
For cycles shader nodes there is now a “Particle Info” node (currently still in review!) for such attributes (it should probably be implemented in BI as well). For now only the Age and Lifetime of the particle (in frames) are available, but more particle data can be exposed if required.
Link
9 Comments
at last someone is digging inside the particles ! THANKS !!
But where is the super basic animatable particle rate gone !?
That's only available in the new particle branch right now...
Yesss ... news about particles nodes ! I did a couples of test with the 14april MikaaH build one month ago:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?253332-My-first-Particles-Nodes-test
Really promising system if more nodes is available. Lukas , keep going your good work !
Looks great .. can't wait to see this develop :)
This is simply awesome! Thanks!!
As far as exposing other particle info other than age and lifetime, i would say hell yes. Expose as much as you can. When it comes to particles and particle behavior, you can never have too much control. :)
yup... particle rate control is needed... looking forward to further developments!
I hope that the size of child particles can be changed over time as well. That would be a nice and needed feature.
I just started experimenting with particles + cycles... can't wait for Particle Node! Thanks so much for developing this!!! :)
I really like the look of this - but what I want to do is slightly different... is it even possible? Let's see...
I want to use the halo rendering for particles, rather than setting up a separate object. Then I want to be able to change the settings for the halo using the node editor. I've been struggling to make this work - is it even possible?
If not, surely that's a huge omission. I've been searching for any tips on this, but they all refer back to this same tutorial.
Thanks in advance for your help!