Dust Particles+ has always been about a lightweight, procedural way to add atmosphere (and life!) to your scenes without the default Blender particle system headaches. This update pushes things a fair bit further in that direction by introducing… well, procedural life.

We’ve included generators for things like swarming insects, bees and birds. It’s all powered by Geometry Nodes, so it stays fast in the viewport – actually now about 5x faster than in 1.2 – while giving you that extra layer of believability.

What’s new?

• Custom 3D Objects each with their own custom generators – Bees, Birds, Raindrops etc (Pro)
• 3D Object deformation options (Pro)
• Now uses a faster points based method (Pro & Lite)

See full changelog below for more details…

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CHANGELOG v1.3

Lite & Pro

• Changed from planes to points
• Scale with bounding box (there was a request to bring that back)
• Transparency variation (in addition to emission variation)
• Dithered alpha option
• Cast shadow option
• Bug fixes and optimisations

Pro only

• Custom 3D Objects; birds, bees, flies, moths, leaves, papers, clumps, raindrop – each with its own geometry nodes control in the modifier panel
• Added ‘Use texture color’ option to preserve more varied texture colors on some of the objects (e.g. birds and bees)
• 3D Object deformation options (good for floating bags and underwater stuff)
• Align rotation to direction
• Random rotation amount (should work for 2d and 3d)
• Particles following curves can now be influenced by the curves radius and tilt

Superhive

Gumroad

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v1.2 Changes

• Wind and Curve Flow (Pro)
• Extra wind themed sprites, leaves and papers (Pro)
• Extra example project files (Pro)
• Asset Browser Icons (Pro)
• Box fade (Pro & Lite)
• Cleaner UI (Pro & Lite)
• Point rendering (Pro & Lite)

See the full v1.2 changelog below for more.

Superhive

Gumroad

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CHANGELOG v1.2

Main asset can be found in these zips:
dust_particles_lite.zip
dust_particles_pro.zip
These include v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2 versions

Extra Project Files:
Project file folders for pro now includes extra demo blends for the v1.2 features. These also contain the v1.1 and v1.0 project files for convenience

Pro:

• New looping directional wind with edge fade feature
• 3 extra paper animated spritesheets
• 1 leaves type animated spritesheet
• New looping wind section – i.e. directional flow to the particles, with it’s own edge fade
• Experimental section – Curve, this makes the particles flow along the selected curve, then use the settings to customise the look and the behavior
• Asset browser icons implementation

Free & Pro:

• UI Updated to take advantage of Blenders collapsible panels that can now be used within the geo nodes modifier
• Camera now no longer needed to be selected, instead there’s a new section at the top ‘Align camera to sprites’, with that enabled Blender will orient the particles towards whatever happens to be the active camera. This is useful for when using multiple cameras
• New ‘Domain’ section has been added to contain the domain related options like v1.1’s sphere fade. This includes a new ‘edge fade’ feature – useful for longer domains
• Experimental section – Point rendering – useful in cycles where we can use spheres as points in the viewport, this gives a very optimised rendering of a 3d object (a sphere in this case). This still works with the rest of the system – however note that the alpha/border settings are relevant in this context.
• Galaxy A and Galaxy B have been tweaked to include some nicer color detail

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CHANGELOG v1.1

Main asset can be found in these zips:
dust_particles_lite.zip
dust_particles_pro.zip
These include v1.0 and v1.1 versions

Extra Project Files:
Project file folders for pro and lite now include extra demo blends for the v1.1 features. These also contain the v1.0 project files for convenience

Pro:

• Created new ‘use mesh shape’ feature so that shapes of any kind can be used as the shape the particles should spawn within
• 5 extra star themed spritesheets

Lite & Pro:
Main Changes

• Created a spherical fade option
• Created a new ‘Scale with Bounding Box’ option which toggles whether or not the particles scale automatically as the bounding box of the domain object changes (in edit mode)
• Created a new ‘Scale Multiplier’ movement parameter to conveniently scale all the movement settings manually (including uniqueness) all at once if needed

UI Changes

• Renamed movement ‘noise scale’ to ‘uniqueness’

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the movement noise scale/uniqueness to properly scale with the rest of the noise parameters when the domain was scaled up or down
• Fixed a bug where the further the mesh domain is from the origin point of the object the more that would affect the type of movement giving inconsistent results in those cases
• Slightly altered how the alpha is used for sprites without alpha channels (old method could result in slightly more transparency than intended)

Miscellaneous
Added a new pro v1.0 blend file that has been refactored to allow it to work for anyone still using older versions of Blender, specifically Blender v3.3 LTS (long term support). Unfortunately we can’t currently support any Blender versions further back than that.
dust_particles+_v1.0_pro_3.3LTS.blend

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Dust Particle Tutorials

• Overview v1.2 update : https://youtu.be/bAGFH1Sy1FE
• Overview v1.1 update : https://youtu.be/mvXgVhbhLFM?si=tLUN5cbeyWHFUYo2
• Original Release tutorial : https://youtu.be/5UGC8xUDgys?si=FATzOkXEbOEoFQR2
• Original Overview by Gleb: https://youtu.be/4sZpmNLMOWU?si=aUIXiXtUs7yZ95eY
• Create a 3d starfield: https://youtu.be/7S-u8X-XH58?si=8hItSP52cNdjq1yl
• Snowglobe : https://youtu.be/jKd_nUSKceQ?si=lNioWUdHjIGfqiHr

• Snowglobe (Short) : Snow Globe Illusion with Particles in Blender #3dblendered #motiongraphics #blender #animation #b3d – YouTube
• DOF in Eevee: https://youtu.be/rO8xupUuN5U?si=W1zsgL6P8RZLkkOM

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p.s. If you’ve already grabbed the pack, the v1.3 update is ready and waiting for you.

Links to the store pages for quick access: Superhive & Gumroad

The post Dust Particles Update v1.3 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

We completely rewrote the core rendering logic of Dust Particles+, switching to point-based sprites with virtual UV mapping. Expect massive performance gains for both the Free and Pro versions.

In this video:

• What makes Geometry Nodes particles so powerful
• Why AI-generated motion graphics hit a wall fast
• Dust Particles+ 1.3 features (including 3d presets and BIRBS!)
• The new rendering architecture behind the 1.3 performance gain

Big thanks to Shahzod Boyhonov aka Specoolar for helping us with the virtual UV mapping for point primitives.

Get Dust Particles+ v1.3 on Gumroad

Get Dust Particles+ v1.3 on Superhive

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Dust Particles 1.3 Changelog:

Lite & Pro

• Changed from camera-facing planes to points with virtual UV mapping (5-10x faster)
• Scale with bounding box (there was a request to bring that back)
• Transparency variation (in addition to emission variation)
• Dithered alpha option
• Cast shadow option
• Bug fixes and optimisations
• New thumbnails

Pro only

• Custom 3D Objects; birds, bees, flies, moths, leaves, papers, clumps, raindrop – each with its own geometry nodes control in the modifier panel
• Added ‘Use texture color’ option to preserve more varied texture colors on some of the objects (e.g. birds and bees)
• 3D Object deformation options (good for floating bags and underwater stuff)
• Align rotation to direction
• Random rotation amount (should work for 2d and 3d)
• Particles following curves can now be influenced by the curves radius and tilt

The post Dust Particles+ 1.3 is a Game Changer (5-10x FASTER) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Free version (on Patreon)

Advanced version (on Patreon, Shrimp Lab Tier 2)

Gotta hand it to Brady Johnston for sharing this crazy fast optimized Plexus setup, probably the fastest one available indeed.

And a major thanks to Erindale for the always incredibly helpful Discord community for Geometry Nodes fans.

Erindale’s online learning platform for technical artists, teaching procedural workflows in Blender and beyond!

Make sure to stick around for more behind-the-scenes looks and techniques as we continue our research for the Space VFX sequel.

The post Cosmic Web Ultra Detail – Blender Asset (Free & Advanced) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.