Can Blender do a particle system of leaves on a tree which is then used in another particle system. I haven’t been able to get it to work but I just saw Spelle “Gleb” indicate in an article that something like that is used in Andrew Price’s grass pack on the tall grass with seeds. He referred to it as a micro particle system. Any thoughts or ideas???
Here it is, i found the article:
As i said there is something i must have missed, since it didn’t work for me…but you are certainly more experience than I am 
However, try not to get nuts with this and let us know what you come up with.
Thanks for the info Fred, I’m definetly on the right track now. I had never even heard of or tried the Particle Instance Modifier. I’m still not sure what it was created for or why but it does seem to work…kinda;)
So here is where I’m at. I got a flat plane (would have a alpha image texture of a leaf on it in final form of course) with Particle Instance modifier on it looking at the Branches as the target object. This was tricky. First had to create the tree. Then separate the branches from trunk. Then change branches origin to just below branches. Then apply Particle Instance modifier to flat plane leaf. Then create a particle system on branches as emitter in which the Particle Instance modifier automatically kicked in and added the leaves to the branches. Then made the leaves & branches a group called leaves. then made a group for the trunk only. I did this because I couldn’t combine the trunk and branches because it seems that weight paint doesn’t control the Particle Instance modifier when used in a particle system so it put leaves all up and down the trunk as well as the branches. Then created two particle system on the ground plane set to hair, one for the trunk and one for the branches. Both with all the same settings so the branches, leaves and trunk all align at the same points. This is by no means a smooth process and is very clumsy.
The problem you can see below. The system will only apply the Particle Instance leaves exactly half of the time. As seen below the ground plan has 10 particle trees, 5 have leaves and 5 don’t. I cant figure out why this is happening. Any thoughts???
Again thanks for any help:)
Oh and the leaf has to be at origin 0,0 as well as the branches and tree trunk. All origins must be at 0,0 center. As soon as you move the origin things go all crazy and do not align.
Thanks derek for sharing your progress. Actually it is so tricky, no surprise it’s not a more popular feature.