New particle system using geometry nodes

[StaxPy]

Check against existing requests

• [X] I have checked existing feature requests, and my idea is different

Describe the context

The particle system at the moment creates a bunch of animations to show a sequence of images that are the particle animation. This creates unecessary keyframes on the timeline and is really difficult to manipulate.

How do you imagine your feature works?

With the new Geometry Nodes, we can create a system that is much more simple, using an instance and changing the reference dynamically.

A new system could allow us to easily choose and change the timing of the particle sequence, but also change the frame rate if needed etc. We could change the particle type on the fly, have a single clean timeline, adjust things rapidly, while having a single GM_object for each system.

What existing workaround (or closest thing to a workaround) do you have today (within Blender, MCprep, or any software)? If there is no workaround, explain why you feel this way.

Using the existing system creates unecessary content that is hard to handle and modify.

[TheDuckCow]

Thanks again for posting this forward @StaxPy - to be clear, is the scope of this proposal here just for new updates to the effect spawner "image sequence" effects? If so, I'll rename the title, as that's the way I understand it. I do think there are other places MCprep could also make use of geo nodes, but we can create separate tasks for each of those as appropriate.

[zNightlord]

It would be an extension to the collection effect and has something like a sub feature of Pooka's weather system.

There something I think it would need to expose are a few option to auto facing alignment, and particle size.

[TheDuckCow]

Hey @StaxPy or anyone else, any chance you could provide a (packed) working file for us to experiment with? I do like the idea of it being a collection effect, that would fit quite nicely without inventing a whole new construct. Though I could also see it as a replacement in 3.2+ to use geo nodes instead of the backwards compatible particle sequence instancing, if we can get it stable enough.

[StaxPy]

@TheDuckCow Here is the file I've setup when I had the idea. I didn't improve it since. Can't upload the file here though... I'll send it on Discord.

[TheDuckCow]

Thanks @StaxPy - I've zipped it and uploaded it here (github allows for zips), that way I won't lose track of it. Just FYI we're not jumping to do this right away, but hoping to in future release.

GM_AnimatedParticle.blend.zip

Just played around with the file a little bit though, and I do already love it - way more useful and friendly! And since it already uses the individual objects generated by the sequence function, it shouldn't be too complicated to hook up.

[TheDuckCow]

Moving this to v3.5.1 at earliest, as we need to focus on getting MCprep's 3.5.0 release stable and ready. It will be more of a dev update.

[StandingPadAnimations]

@TheDuckCow should I mark this as a Todo for 3.5.2?