Blender Master Class

Controlling Particles with Textures

While so far we have focused on using vertex groups to control particle hair properties, Blender can also use texture input to control aspects of particle systems in the same way that we use vertexes. To use a texture this way, first assign a particle system to your mesh, switch to the Textures tab of the Properties editor, and click the Particle Textures icon (see Figure 9-14). Now you can add textures and use them for the same inputs as you would vertex groups, including the density and length of hair for hair particles, as well as clump, kink, and rough values. (Values such as time and velocity are used for dynamic point particle systems.) By default, white will be mapped to 1.0, and black to 0.0 for these ...