Particle Groups for Particle Systems

Say you’ve got a fire, made of three particles. Smoke, flame and embers. Want to change when the fire starts and ends? That’s 6 values you have to individually alter. Want a second fire somewhere else?  Now you have to make a duplicate and set another six values for each Particle System.

With Particle Groups you can group all of these particle systems into 1 which can be modified and made copies of. You can change when certain particles will start at, the total length of the Particle Groups, as well as creating a loop. Now it's easier than ever to create epic visual effects, super special effects!

In order to modify a specific particle system, you’d just want to modify the original which you used to combine into a Particle Group. This translates into endless variations and total control over your results.

When you create a group and copy it into new groups, all those groups will inherit the same values as the original. Changing any of the values of the copies and original will change all groups together. You can easily ungroup a selected group and have it as its own new group that follows its own new values.

FAQ

The .zip doesn’t install in Blender

• Please un-zip the archive and install the .py script.

How do I activate an addon?

• Use this 20 sec guide – https://youtu.be/wOv4oHO5Kqg

VIDEO DOCUMENTATION

DOCUMENTATION

Location

Panel
Particle Properties ‣ Particle Group

Actions

Generate/Bake AllRegenerates all particle groups for all objects in a scene and bakes all particle systems

Generate
Regenerates all particle groups for the selected object, creating all particle systems those particle groups spawn

Bake
Bakes all particle systems

Clear Particles
Delete all particle systems belonging to the active object

Toggle Viewport
Enables or Disables all particle systems belonging to this object from appearing in the viewport

Toggle Render
Enables or Disables all particle systems belonging to this object from appearing in the render

New Group
Make a new Particle Group

Settings

Start Frame
The frame within the playback on which the particle group will trigger

Target
The target particle group to trigger. 1 particle group can be triggered multiple times. Use the second text box to rename the group, not the first text box. Only use the first (with the eyeglass) to select a particle group target

Particle Child (each item has its own settings)
Start Delay
How many frames before or after the ‘Start Frame’ of the particle group this particle system should trigger on

Particle
The target particle system that this particle group will be based off of. Create this particle system as you would in default Blender

Duration
How long in frames this particle system should trigger for, once it starts

Frequency
How many ‘particles’ should spawn every frame. This is the same as the total number of particles divided by the duration

Loop Particle Group
Loop
Enable this particle group’s ability to ‘loop’

Loops Gap
How many frames should pass between every time this particle group loops

Loop Count
How many times this particle group should loop before stopping. The first loop starts once the ‘Start Frame’ is reached

Random Offset
Randomize the frame the particle group triggers on by this value. The equation for this is the ‘trigger frame’ ± a random number between the random offset and the negative version of the random offset

Offset Together
If true, every particle system within the particle group will share the same ‘random offset’ every time a loop happens. If it is false, every particle system is given its own random offset

CHANGELOG
Particle Groups 1.5

• 'Generate and Bake All' no longer deletes particle systems not added by this script
• Data-Linked copies of Particle Groups' no longer need to be unlinked to have them spawn in at different times... their 'start times' are now independent of one another

Particle Groups 1.4

• The 'Target' particle group now has an 'add new' button to create a new Particle Group

Particle Groups 1.3

• Default generated-name of a particle group has been fixed

Particle Groups 1.2

• Structured the data to more easily allow particle groups to be added and edited