# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Particle Systems

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## Introduction

Particle systems are used to simulate large amounts of small moving
objects, creating phenomena of higher order like fire, dust, clouds,
smoke, or fur, grass and other strand based objects. You may also use
other objects as a visualization of particles.

Before you start with the tutorials, you should at least take a brief
overview about the very extensive documentation
pages of
the particle system. You will find every single parameter explained in
the manual if you have the desire to delve deeper \...

Don\'t forget: particles alone don\'t do any magic. They are only a
placeholder for something nice to view. You have to take care of the
visualization also, and that is usually the harder part than to create
the particle system.

## The very first particle system

### Creating a particle system

framed\|**Image 1a:** Where to create a new particle
system
framed\|right\|**Image 1b:** The very first particle
system To create a
particle system:

-   Create a mesh object to be the "parent" (source) of the particles
    (only mesh objects can emit particles). Let's use a simple plane to
    start with.
-   select the object
-   change to the Particles
    ![](Blender255ParticlesContextButton.png "Blender255ParticlesContextButton.png")
    tab in the Object Properties window
-   click on the "+" button (**Image. 1a**)

Voila, your first particle system (**Image. 1b**)! It doesn\'t do
anything useful now, but we\'re going to change that on the following
pages.

-   To see the particles, you must start the animation running by
    pressing . You will see particles
    appear and fall from the plane. Press
     to stop the animation; you return
    to frame 1. The particle movement is cached (stored), so if you play
    your animation again it will go faster (well, you won\'t notice any
    difference in this simple case).
-   If you want to stop the animation in the current frame, press
     while it is running instead of
    .
-   The shortcut for returning to the first frame is
    )
-   To see the particles even better change to wireframe mode
    (),

If you change anything in your particle system you always have to return
to frame 1, to recalculate the system from the start.

Use the *timeline* window along the bottom of the screen to change
easily between frames.

### Changing properties of the system

framed\|**Image 2a:** Particles emitted in the direction of the face
normal of the plane
Some important settings, from the "Emission" panel:

-   *Number:* the total number of particles; increase this to 5000
-   *Start:* and *End:* the start and end frame of the emission
-   *Lifetime:* the lifetime in frames of the particles

And in the "Velocity" panel are settings that combine to determine the
initial velocity of the particles:

-   *Normal:* a velocity component in the direction of the face normal
    (if emitted from faces)
-   *Tangent:* a velocity component parallel to the face
-   *Rotation:* controls the direction of the tangent velocity component
-   *Emitter Object X/Y/Z*: a velocity component oriented in the
    object's coordinate system
-   *Object:* a multiplier that imparts some proportion of the object
    velocity to the particles (try moving the object around with a
    nonzero value for this field to see its effect)
-   *Random:* a random contribution to the object velocity

Initially, the plane has its face normal oriented upwards. However, it
probably looks like the particles are emitted downwards. This is because
the initial normal velocity of 1.0 is quite small compared to the force
of gravity (which is on by default). Try increasing it to something like
10.0, and when you rerun the animation, you should see the particles
rise quite high above the plane before falling down again.

If you render a frame with particles showing, you will see the particles
appear as white blobs. This is the default *Halo* rendering of the
particles. 

### Changing the material of the particles

framed\|right\|**Image 3a:** The first simple *Halo*
material.

-   Switch the Properties window to the Materials
    ![](Blender255MaterialContextButton.png "Blender255MaterialContextButton.png")
    tab and create a new material for the plane.
-   Change the material type to *Halo*. (see also the Manual on
    Halos).
    Halos are a post rendering effect, that is applied after the scene
    is finished. So halos can\'t shed any lights on other objects, they
    are not rendered behind *RayTransp* materials (like glass).

framed\|**Image 3b:** Our first particle system rendered in frame
68

-   Set the color to deep blue (RGB: 0/0/1)
-   *Size:* 0.05 so each halo is quite small.
-   *Hardness:* 127 so that each halo has the maximum sharp edge
-   *Add:* 0.5 so that the brightness increases where several halos
    overlap

Set the world color to black and render (**Img. 3b**). Nothing special
till now, but that will change soon. So proceed to the next page, where
we\'re going to make some fire.

