Is there ever going to be plans to give a major overhaul to blender particles or no?
Short answer: Yes. Particles are being re-written basically from scratch.
2 Likes
Does this also include the hair system or more specifically mesh particles (e.g. vegetation), too?
As far as I know there is no such option in the functions branch (yet?).
1 Like
I think the goal is to separate hair and particles into two different systems, as having them combined makes it much harder to expand both areas and was generally bad design.
Lukas Tonne has worked in a branch related to hair (see the commit logs) and the new particles (with the general backend stuff) will likely be the first thing from the Everything Nodes project to be committed.
4 Likes
Yes. Particles will will become their own independent point clouds, which can reference emitter objects. This is a lot more flexible, if you want multiple emitters contributing to a single particle simulation.
You won’t add particles ‘on’ the emitter anymore.
Hair, on the other hand, is connected to a surface, and will work differently.
3 Likes
Thanks for the quick replies 
In that case, will there be a dedicated scattering system for objects or will that remain part of the hair system?
Is there already progress on that, too?
I think for scattering we will be able to use nodes, right now we use AN yo scatter all kind of things
@JuanGea I tried that a while ago but after a certain number of instances the viewport got very slow compare to a hair particle system. Maybe because AN uses actual instances that are also shown in the outliner? If you have a good solution you can PM me. I would be happy to know
Lukas Toenne was working on Dupli Generators years ago which unfortunately didn’t work properly.
https://developer.blender.org/D1523
Would a ‘revival’ of that make sense?
What we do is that we work with empties, the only thing we distribute are empties, then we define the instanced collection on each empty, that way we can have several millions of polygons on viewport and the viewport performance don’t suffer too much.
Since hair are connected to the surface is there a plan or effort to use data from shader node editor in hair system? For example for distribution?
That would be extremly useful in procedural and non destructive workflows.
Simpler solution without changing Cycles code could be reimplementing basic mapping and noise nodes from Cycles in hair node system. So the user could manually sync particle mapping coordinates and node/texture info with shading. Thou that sounds like short term solution.
There is a plan for using Cycles/Eevee shader nodes for other areas of Blender:
https://developer.blender.org/T54656
5 Likes
is it not overkill ? not eveyone need to do a complex node tree just for scattering some grass… if the particle system is going to be replaced soon why can’t we find work/progress for everything related to hair particles ? all the attention seems to be for motion graphics which is a minority of users. I really hope hair particles are not going to be neglected.
Well, it depends.
We don’t scatter just grass, we need to control the grass to control the cut pattern, size, family, shape of distribution (all can be done with particles)
But apart from that we have to distribute a whole range of different plants to define different types of gardens or environments, in curved terrains, plain terrains, with walls, without walls, with pools, and many other obstacles.
As I said for grass we just use particles with some textures to control the birth and scale and that’s it, what I mean with what we do with AN is more similar to forest pack and rail clone, and everything node based.
well. my addon will be useless shortly then…
I don’t think so, it could be simpler and faster, there is forest pack, but there is also Corona scatter or Vray Scatter, it all depends on the needs
1 Like
anyone have info for particles nodes for hair ? some peeps told that it’s going to have it’s own separated editor. i assume it’s not going to be replaced soon ? there’s not even a feedback thread yet for this part. litteraly all the attention is for motion graphics.
Work on a replacement hair system has not started yet, there is no concrete time schedule for it currently.
1 Like
I started a topic regrouping every major features missing / flaws of the current particles Hair system. from a scattering point of view.
I don’t see a lot of craze regarding it’s developpement. scary…
2 Likes