Hello! I made this little animation of rain with Cycles. How does it look?
They are particles with drops objects, plus cycles motion blur and camera dof, plus an HDR environment texture.
Now that’s convincing! Is the background an image or is it rendered?
Thank you! It’s an HDR in the background, then it is rendered! 
Nice, Did you use a sphere with a glass shader as raindrop?
Yes, it’s a sphere, but very long in Z axiz. Suppose it’s a 15 cm long rain drop. With the motion blur it seems longer. And has a full transparent glass with 1.33 IOR.
I agree, it does look pretty realistic.
Very nice! Your choice of background image helps sell the rain as being the real thing.
That’s Good, because some artists don’t use motion-blur with rain, that makes it look odd.
Though I would use a round sphere, so when the wind hits the rain you get a cool motion effect, if you use, as you say; “very long in Z axiz” Sphere, you may get odd effects…
Just in case you ever want to add wind to it 
But overall a great rain effect
Jim
Didn’t try with wind. I hope it makes the drop orientate in the direction of the gravity force conbined with the wind force. I’ll give it a try!
nice quite realistic!