Maybe this gives the desired result:
Something like that? 
Trying to get some decent looking fur with the new particles, this is leopard variety, though it’s meant to be viewed from a bit further away than this.
This is killing me! How do you get the real-time weight group painting to control static particle emission, like in the Suzanne mohawk pic?
Just make a weigth group in the mesh, and in the particle settings, press the “show emmiter” button, now press the “faces” button below and the “TRan” and “EDist” buttons that appear. Now configure the particles as you want and when you are done select the weigth group in the “emit from” section, go to weigth paint and start painting particles 
It would be cool if we could have diferent weight groups affecting different atributes of the particles like length, random, force, normal… :o
Doh! I read the docs but it didn’t register that that’s what it was for. Thanks.
ZanQdo, you raised a good point about a feature that works like weight painting that could affect particle length for instance, I’ve been thinking about that as well. Would it possible you reckon to work it the same as weight painting but where the opacity was related to the particle length, for instance blue minimal length and red maxium ??.That would make for some incredible possibilities !.
I’m can’t figure out how to get the shadows. I have “blender20050925_Bullet_Particle” windows build, but when I render without halo or wire, i just get the default white halos. I’m new to particles…there must be something somewhere I’m missing. I tried rendering the pelonew.blend that was posted a while ago, and I get a blank plane…if I turn the Alpha of the hair texture up, it becomes visible, but only as a halo like material.
You turn on static particles and turn on Vect in the particle buttons. You DON’T use wireframe or halos for the particle texture. Just a normal old texture. That’s what tells the renderer to create faces from the particles, which will in turn give you shadows and reflections.
Hello, with this version you can’t do what you want because the hair is in Blender since the 2005/09/27 download the last : http://blender3d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7082&sid=5442608a5282b82db7f4841519342ccb
ahhhh, that’s it. Thanks.
I still need to play with my texture settings to get the fibers looking a little better, but otherwise it’s good! Now if only I had more time…
http://www.geocities.com/dsch57035/blender/FURSETTINGS2.jpg
by any chance…is there a mac os x build of this cool particle thing?
BrianH has one here: http://blendertestbuilds.de/index.php?dir=Testbuilds/Blender/MacOSX/BrianH/
and the fix:
http://bchynds.com/index.php?option=com_simpleboard&Itemid=46&func=view&id=12&catid=3
I did some particle testing. The only difference between these two renders are the resolution at render time. the thinner looking one comes from 2x the resolution and then downscaling pp. the new particles always render as 1 pixel!!!
and in this vid i just zoomed in and out. the grass gets thinner the closer it gets. just something to think about before final render size and downscaling pp consideration. 1.8mb divx~
http://www.eaemedia.com/blender/test.avi
All I can say is… just wow. This latest build is amazing!
does any one know if yafray will ever be able to support particle?
these new rendered faces particles render in yafray
hey thats looks perfect for a fuzzy caterpillar
The additions to the particle system are really great, I just spent a couple of minutes and got this. It is a static particle system with a ‘leaf’ mesh dupliverted. The leaf locations are set using the shown vertex-group, even distribution and true-random are used to spread them out. With a few more branches and a more complex twig&leaves object dupliverted this could be a decent tree.
Painting on grass is also nice, though duplivert might be better then auto-fibers right now. The auto-fibers (one pixel meshs created for static particles) don’t give you any width control, and they use anisotropic shader regardless of their material settings. I’m sure someone over at Orange is complaining about that stuff too though. Maybe tomarrow Ton will write an botanical simulation system on his lunch break %|
I did some particle testing. The only difference between these two renders are the resolution at render time. the thinner looking one comes from 2x the resolution and then downscaling pp. the new particles always render as 1 pixel!!!
Is that good or bad??
i don’t think it is either. just something to be aware of.
Hyper image ! 
