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The Particle Shader component is intended to shade particles, such as Splash, Mist and Foam.

It has been optimized to render very fast in comparison to a traditional material shader, while still being capable of achieving a large variety of different effects, such as sparks, embers, sand, or even thin cigarette smoke.

Simply create a Particle Shader node, and add a Particle Group, such as Mist particles, to the Particle Shader's Particle Set. The Particle Shader will then shade the Particle Group, using the cache data from the sim. Since the Particle Shader is a separate node, you can use multiple Particle Shaders with different settings, in order to shade multiple particle systems within the same simulation.

The Particle Shader also provides several different shading modes for more sophisticated control, enabling you to quickly achieve a large variety of different effects for different scenarios. It can draw particles as Points, a variety of different Bubbles, or even voxelize particles into a grid using the Fog mode.

Note that there are three different bubble-style modes available that are intended for different scenarios: Bubbles, Cellular, and Splashes. When rendering Foam particles, you can use the Particle Shader's Cellular mode to render polyhedron-like cells, that look very similar to real foam. This makes it possible to shade foam that is close-up to the camera, and have it look convincing.

Mode: Bubbles (close-up)

Mode: Cellular (close-up)

Mode: Splashes (close-up)

Mode: Bubbles/Cellular

Mode: Splashes

Mode: Point