of strands changing between frames, vector blur couldn't work. Now
speed vectors are interpolated from the surface. This also means
child particles don't have to be computed in the previous and next
frames, so saves time too.
- Particle system distribution wasn't flushed properly for non-edited hair.
- For instances in the renderer, also count their verts and faces in the stats.
- Fix for error in the "surface diffuse" formula for strand shading.
- Keyed particles work again for all visualizations (previously only "path"), they still need some work though to be fully operational.
- Keyed particles weren't saved or loaded correctly.
====================
- "From Dupli" option for orco and uv texture coordinates. For dupliverts,
duplifaces and dupli particles, this uses the orco and uv at the point
on the parent surface. Can for example be used for texturing feathers
and leafs. Note that uv only works for duplifaces and particles emitted
from faces, these are not defined at vertices.
- "Width Fade" option for strand render, to fade out along the width of the
strand. Committing this so it can be tested, might be changed or removed
even, if it doesn't give nice results.
============================
- Strand render now has options to remove child strands as
the object's faces becomes smaller, in the Simplification
particle panel.
- "Reference Size" is the approximate size of the object on
screen, after which simplification starts.
- "Rate" is how fast strands are removed.
- "Transition" is the percentage of strands being faded out as
they are removed.
- Another "Viewport" option removes strands on faces that are
outside of the viewport. "Rate" again controls how fast these
are removed.
- Strand render in Blender Units now has an adjustable minimum
width. Below this minimum width, strands start fading out
instead of getting smaller.
=========
- The render and realtime button for the particle system modifier
and the enabled button for particles now work seperate again,
made a bad design decision to tie them together. Now with only
the render button and not realtime enabled it renders.
- Fix for bug #7948: particle mode crash while constraining axis.
- Fix for bug #7945: crash loading effector groups from an old file.
- Fix for bug #7942: crash for reactor particles emitting from particles.
=========
- Normalize strand coordinates over the length of the strand, not
cut off when with e.g. length texture control.
- Weight paint and particle mode x-mirror now works with deformation
and shape keys active.
- X-ray is now disabled in particle mode, messed up depth tests.
=========
- Texture orco coordinates for particles are now actual orcos instead
of just the vertex positions, which means they are the same under
deformations and the same as the ones on the mesh.
- Particle distribution now uses these orcos to get consistent
distributions independent of deformation.
- This required changing the way orco's are computed for meshes. Now
instead of generating an orco derivedmesh separately, the derivedmesh
is generated alongside the regular one and stored in an orco custom
data layer.
=========
- Fix crash in particle transform with the particle system not editable.
- Particle child distribution and caching is now multithreaded.
- Child particles now have a separate Render Amount next to the existing
Amount. The render amount particles are now only distributed and cached
at render time, which should make editing with child particles faster.
- Two new options for diffuse strand shading:
- Surface Diffuse: computes the strand normal taking the normal at
the surface into account.
- Blending Distance: the distance in Blender units over which to
blend in the normal at the surface.
- Special strand rendering for more memory efficient and faster hair and
grass. This is a work in progress, and has a number of known issues,
don't report bugs to me for this feature yet.
More info:
http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-244/particles/
=========
Merge of the famous particle patch by Janne Karhu, a full rewrite
of the Blender particle system. This includes:
- Emitter, Hair and Reactor particle types.
- Newtonian, Keyed and Boids physics.
- Various particle visualisation and rendering types.
- Vertex group and texture control for various properties.
- Interpolated child particles from parents.
- Hair editing with combing, growing, cutting, .. .
- Explode modifier.
- Harmonic, Magnetic fields, and multiple falloff types.
.. and lots of other things, some more info is here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Particles_Rewritehttp://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Particles_Rewrite_Doc
The new particle system cannot be backwards compatible. Old particle
systems are being converted to the new system, but will require
tweaking to get them looking the same as before.
Point Cache
===========
The new system to replace manual baking, based on automatic caching
on disk. This is currently used by softbodies and the particle system.
See the Cache API section on:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/PhysicsSprint
Documentation
=============
These new features still need good docs for the release logs, help
for this is appreciated.
