I have a scene with a camera moving around some objects, and I need to have some faint little particles floating about.
I am having no luck zeroing in on instructions for exactly what I am looking for. I want the object layer and the particle layer on different layers so that I can easily tweak blending options at composite time (either in AfterEffect or Blender’s compositor). However, I also need the particles to honor the objects in the scene, so that when an object moves in front of a particle, the particle is no longer visible.
I think it’s easiest to describe this in pictures. Is this possible in Blender without having to include the particles in the same scene?
I have tried copying instances of the scene geometry on the particle layer. This doesn’t work because I either need a light in the scene to light the particles, which lights those instances which I don’t want, or I have to make the particles themselves emissive, which causes light to cast on the instances sometimes as well, causing weird lighting artifacts at composite time.
Thanks, guys.