Feature Preview: Cycles Render Engine

by Jonathan Williamson

In this Blender 2.5 feature development preview, we give you a look at the new Cycles render engine being developed currently. This new, internal, rendering engine is set to modernize the rendering and shading pipeline for Blender, potentially leading to much more realistic and interactive renders.

Download testing builds of Cycles from Graphicall

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Discussion

87 Responses to “Feature Preview: Cycles Render Engine”
  1. Aditia
    Posts: 10

    Thanks Jonathan…anyway, it’s already ported to Mac?

    #
    1
     May 2, 2011 at 8:39 pm
    Reply
  2. mitsuma1
    Posts: 6

    There is only one Win32 build without CUDA support.
    http://graphicall.org/106

    #
    2
     May 2, 2011 at 8:48 pm
    Reply
  3. floridajo
    Posts: 37

    This is pretty cool. It seems so similar to the progression Final Cut Pro is taking in that it was written 11 years ago and was outdated. Final Cut X is coming out with ‘no rendering’ as an enhancement. This is due to going from 32 bit architecture software to 64 bit, and taking advantage of multiple cores.

    #
    3
     May 2, 2011 at 8:55 pm
    Reply
    • bob_blob
      Posts: 1

      Actually this is completely different. FCPX was re written from the ground up to include openCL support for rendering, FCP already took advantage of multicores but was all done CPU.

      Blender is just adding another rendering engine

      #
      3.1
       Sep 20, 2011 at 4:26 pm
      Reply
  4. therealnoz
    Posts: 24

    There seems to be a problem with video playback.

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    4
     May 2, 2011 at 8:55 pm
    Reply
  5. epimeison
    Posts: 1

    Downloading and ready to test!

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    5
     May 2, 2011 at 9:01 pm
    Reply
  6. dannykneip
    Posts: 160

    That crazy monkey never looked so good!! :D I’m excited to see the final release. Thanks for the demo!

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    6
     May 2, 2011 at 9:08 pm
    Reply
  7. Ryan
    Posts: 1

    i think i see the point of getting the new engine now… i wonder when it will be done i wanna make something out of glass now… but without reality in the engine it will be a..idk ty for showing this

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    7
     May 2, 2011 at 9:14 pm
    Reply
  8. Leon
    Posts: 4

    anyone else drooling?

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    8
     May 2, 2011 at 9:28 pm
    Reply
    • Ickathu
      Posts: 14

      Nope, but I think my brain exploded from too much exposure to awesomemess…

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      8.1
       May 2, 2011 at 9:55 pm
      Reply
  9. benjamin_morgan
    Posts: 22

    Will the windows 32 bit build work on my windows 64 bit system? Plese say yes.

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    9
     May 2, 2011 at 9:33 pm
    Reply
    • Klesus
      Posts: 14

      Yes

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      9.1
       May 3, 2011 at 12:06 am
      Reply
  10. Kevin
    Posts: 13

    Hey Jonathan is there a way to render without having those 2 lit planes showing up in the render? Say, if you didn’t want to go in that close.

    I guess just disabling their respective render icons in the outliner? Or would that disable them completely, therefore not allowing them to light the scene… anyway it’s all very exciting!

    #
    10
     May 2, 2011 at 9:45 pm
    Reply
    • DimitrisC
      Posts: 10

      No need to use the planes. Just add a new material for the sky and give it a nice bright color.

      #
      10.1
       May 3, 2011 at 2:49 am
      Reply
  11. imtriggerhappy9
    Posts: 92

    OH… MY… GOSH :) THIS THING LOOKS AMAZING. i havent been this excited for anything in my entire life ha ha ha and thats saying something

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    11
     May 2, 2011 at 10:05 pm
    Reply
  12. bardes
    Posts: 53

    Just a tip, don’t forget to turn off the 3d view rendering during the image rendering, because if you don’t blender will keep rendering the 3d view while you render the final image and it’s a huge resource waste…

    #
    12
     May 2, 2011 at 10:32 pm
    Reply
  13. gdawg
    Posts: 6

    For building the Cycles branch (Linux & OS X)
    http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Render/Cycles/Building

    #
    13
     May 2, 2011 at 10:33 pm
    Reply
  14. Jeff
    Posts: 5

    On the linux build, it gives an option to switch between CPU and GPU rendering. GPU makes a pretty big difference with my 460gtx; it renders much faster. I can’t wait until this is ready to be released.

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    14
     May 2, 2011 at 10:37 pm
    Reply
  15. natew
    Posts: 21

    You actually can use the GPU as long as it has been built with CUDA. Right now I am running a SVN version of Cycles and to get GPU support, I had to build with CUDA. OpenCL is planned for the future as well.

    Also for building did you check the wiki page? ( http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Render/Cycles/Building )

    It should work for you. And if you want GPU support you HAVE to build with CUDA.

    #
    15
     May 2, 2011 at 10:38 pm
    Reply
  16. jcdeighan
    Posts: 164

    I am definitely drooling!

    Is there any development currently in Cycles for a render farm type setup? I haven’t set it up yet so don’t know but I do like the fact that Blender’s internal engine has a built-in network render farm type option.

    Thanks for the great preview! Very good info!

    Jeremy Deighan

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    16
     May 3, 2011 at 12:40 am
    Reply
  17. SeriousM
    Posts: 9

    nice feature video, thank you very much!

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    17
     May 3, 2011 at 4:14 am
    Reply
  18. kraosos
    Posts: 8

    Looks fantastic, but does anybody know if it works with amd/ati cards – I can’t see any result on win xp – 32bit – XercesBlue build. Thanks

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    18
     May 3, 2011 at 4:31 am
    Reply
    • bebR
      Posts: 14

      As ATI cards does have CUDA, but OpenCL, you’ll have wait for the OpenCL port.
      However, it should work with your CPU but rendering won’t be as quick.

      #
      18.1
       May 3, 2011 at 6:31 am
      Reply
      • bebR
        Posts: 14

        Sorry, I wanted to say: “ATI cards does NOT have CUDA …”

        #
        18.1.1
         May 3, 2011 at 6:33 am
      • kraosos
        Posts: 8

        I know, but this build was compiled without CUDA only CPU calculates the result. Anyway thanks for response

        #
        18.1.2
         May 3, 2011 at 7:54 am
  19. Sanne
    Posts: 2

    Cycles does work with Blender lamps, you just have to give the lamp an emission surface in the lamp settings. Only point lamps are supported right now, with hard shadows only, though.

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    19
     May 3, 2011 at 5:56 am
    Reply
  20. MSZ
    Posts: 2

    That is something I was waiting for! It will be really a revolution when it goes production ready.

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    20
     May 3, 2011 at 6:51 am
    Reply
  21. Aditia A. Pratama
    Posts: 10

    Hey, I’ve made tutorial on how to installed Blender cycles on ubuntu, visit here http://fossgrafis.com/tutorial/how-to-install-blender-with-cycles-render-engine-in-ubuntu/

    thanks :)

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    21
     May 3, 2011 at 8:04 am
    Reply
  22. jbev
    Posts: 9

    That is really great news. I’ve seen the preview in the Blender developer’s blog, but your introduction goes more into detail. Especially the node based materials are absolutely awesome.
    Looking forward to seeing this production ready.

    #
    22
     May 3, 2011 at 8:23 am
    Reply
  23. AE
    Posts: 53

    This looks incredible! Just hope they speed it up a little. Don’t want it to take 20 mins. per render like yafaray and luxrender. This looks so good though.

    #
    23
     May 3, 2011 at 9:06 am
    Reply
  24. reavenkhali
    Posts: 7

    @3:33 I have my doubts it will ever work with representational models of lights – they’re not physically based at all and defeat the purpose of a path tracer. Usually the only generalized light they keep is the sun sky.

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    24
     May 3, 2011 at 10:27 am
    Reply
  25. lonewolf
    Posts: 42

    Are there any tutorials on converting an animated model and converting it 2 a .x file ? saving the animated parts as well as mesh and textures.. ??

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    25
     May 3, 2011 at 1:15 pm
    Reply
  26. wesburke
    Posts: 319

    Hey guys – Just saw this on our sister site. Rendered with Cycles – http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?217158-Fizzy-Water-Bottle

    #
    26
     May 3, 2011 at 1:26 pm
    Reply
  27. jcdeighan
    Posts: 164

    @ Wes

    That’s a sweet shot at that bottle.

    @ Aditia

    I might be installing it tonight thanks to you! I haven’t watched the video yet but what version of Ubuntu are you running?

    Jeremy Deighan

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    27
     May 3, 2011 at 5:27 pm
    Reply
  28. riftmaster
    Posts: 24

    it does work with lights!

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    28
     May 3, 2011 at 5:36 pm
    Reply
  29. Marcus
    Posts: 21

    This demo was CPU usage only? Are you serious?!? Whoa! (what is your CPU by the way?)

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    29
     May 3, 2011 at 5:43 pm
    Reply
    • jonathanwilliamson
      Posts: 1761

      Indeed! I did this on a Intel 2.93 core i7, iMac OS X 10.6.

      -Jonathan

      #
      29.1
       May 3, 2011 at 8:54 pm
      Reply
  30. dani
    Posts: 16

    at +-10:30min in the video – breathe Jonathan and take a short break and do not fall from the chair – because that happened to me.

    thanks a lot for this preview – wow – very nice
    dani

    #
    30
     May 3, 2011 at 8:34 pm
    Reply
  31. Amezke
    Posts: 2

    This is really good, I tried yesterday a non CUDA version (for Windows) and was really fast, but now I’ve tried the CUDA version is 4 times faster! Awesome!

    #
    31
     May 4, 2011 at 3:34 am
    Reply
    • markiz
      Posts: 2

      in my case, CUDA is 10 times faster than CPU – did a quick test with default scene / 100 passes:

      i7 950, GTX570, W7 64bit:
      CPU – 45.15 s
      GPU – 4.73 s

      i7 950, GTX570, linux 64bit:
      CPU – 29 s
      GPU – 4.8 s

      - so CPU on Linux (OSX probably as well) is much faster than Windows :)

      #
      31.1
       May 4, 2011 at 7:47 am
      Reply
  32. bob anymouse
    Posts: 40

    YAAAAAAY! MUST DOWNLOAD THIS! IT WILL REVOLUTIONIZE BLENDER!

    #
    32
     May 4, 2011 at 7:31 am
    Reply
  33. bob anymouse
    Posts: 40

    ARHGH! How do you download it for windows 7!? I can’t get it to work!?

    #
    33
     May 4, 2011 at 8:15 am
    Reply
    • markiz
      Posts: 2

      here:
      http://graphicall.org/130

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      33.1
       May 4, 2011 at 8:53 am
      Reply
      • bob anymouse
        Posts: 40

        thanks, but how do I install it as an addon?

        #
        33.1.1
         May 4, 2011 at 9:41 am
      • Hans B Erickson
        Posts: 8

        The graphical.org builds do work but sometimes has a memory leak in them and can cause an OS crash so be sure you do not have anything running you may need to save. I am sure this issue will be resolved real soon

        #
        33.1.2
         May 4, 2011 at 11:59 am
  34. Hans B Erickson
    Posts: 8

    Since I just moved my OS to Linux I will be building this as much as possible so I can stay up to date. This is exciting!! When this becomes part of the main trunk Blender will be a MAJOR contender over the paid 3DGC apps out there now. Finally render is getting a HUGE makeover. Go Go Blender!!!

    @Johnathan can this be move out of quick tips and into the citizen download section :P

    #
    34
     May 4, 2011 at 11:57 am
    Reply
    • john d smith ii
      Posts: 204

      This is exactly how I was thinking materials would work when I opened Blender for the first time! Thumbs up for the Devs on this one! Looks awesome already! I’m pretty optimistic about this one. Making a feature length CG movie with Blender is an incredible challenge with countless obstacles and just plain roadblocks when it comes to what is possible in a given amount of time, especially when mainstream CG films are focused on extravagance, so I’m thrilled to see that I might have this by the time I’m into Production, because I’d rather use Blender if possible.

      Thanks for the heads up to everyone Jonathan.

      #
      34.1
       May 4, 2011 at 10:55 pm
      Reply
  35. Konstantins
    Posts: 3

    I really hope this will get a bad-ass biased engine!
    It’d be amazing to have at least remotely alike speedup of biased rendering as unbiased got with “liberation” of GPU processing power.

    #
    35
     May 4, 2011 at 1:49 pm
    Reply
  36. Adam
    Posts: 1

    Did anyone managed to render textured models with Cycles? I cant find a option for it :) . Maybe that is why it is only a preview :) .

    #
    36
     May 5, 2011 at 2:48 am
    Reply
  37. sha
    Posts: 9

    thanks for that tutorial,can’t wait for the fully published version this is something i’ve been waiting for for a while now.

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    37
     May 5, 2011 at 7:02 am
    Reply
  38. Titanium Pen
    Posts: 3

    MUST TRY IT!!!

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    38
     May 5, 2011 at 8:43 am
    Reply
  39. bob anymouse
    Posts: 40

    ARRRgh!!! I have downloaded it to my computer (thanks markiz for the link) but How do I install it!? HELP PLEASE!

    #
    39
     May 5, 2011 at 10:24 am
    Reply
    • bob anymouse
      Posts: 40

      Oops heheh. it worked. (blush)

      #
      39.1
       May 5, 2011 at 10:53 am
      Reply
  40. bob anymouse
    Posts: 40

    Oops heheh. it worked. *sheepish grin*

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    40
     May 5, 2011 at 10:54 am
    Reply
  41. axel
    Posts: 11

    the best news in years.

    can u do someting about freestyle rendering

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    41
     May 5, 2011 at 11:56 am
    Reply
  42. Ben U
    Posts: 6

    No one’s mentioned this yet, from what I’ve seen(maybe I missed it in the bideo), but it had me stumbling for a bit:
    You need to enable the Cycles add-on in your user preferences before you see the option in the render engine

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    42
     May 5, 2011 at 12:27 pm
    Reply
  43. Gustaf
    Posts: 1

    Tried Cycles, great render engine! One problem though, I animated a few frames and when I render the animation every frame rendered is actually the first frame. I played around with the output options but still the same result. Anyone else with similar experience? I ran the Blender 2.57+Cycles Win 32 bit version on a Win7 64bit PC.

    Also, if I render, let say frame nr 34 I actually get that frame rendered but rendering the whole animation at once doesn’t work (only first frame is rendered multiple times).

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    43
     May 5, 2011 at 1:49 pm
    Reply
  44. Convoluted
    Posts: 6

    AWESOME! Finally! xD

    I’m so excited about this.

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    44
     May 5, 2011 at 4:22 pm
    Reply
  45. FreeMind
    Posts: 43

    You could have removed those white fireflies for the banner image ;)

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    45
     May 5, 2011 at 4:59 pm
    Reply
  46. Císi
    Posts: 1

    Does it render hair system?

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    46
     May 5, 2011 at 5:35 pm
    Reply
  47. duoc9119
    Posts: 8

    I am using Ubuntu 11.04 and I can’t seem to get the Linux build to work. Can anyone help?

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    47
     May 6, 2011 at 2:32 am
    Reply
  48. crashoveryd
    Posts: 35

    Hello I have a problem rendering of light in the bottom right you can see the image in real time and at the top left but the rendering in the rendering of light is very low, however I put a light on the scene

    here is the image that shows the problem:

    http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=325553Bug.jpg

    #
    48
     May 6, 2011 at 11:20 am
    Reply
  49. aoti007
    Posts: 13

    Jonathan – Exciting times ahead for Blender. Tried my first attempt with Cycles.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/62573026@N03/5695810705/in/photostream

    The advancement in render capabilities will certainly propel Blender to another plane.

    Thanks for the feature video.

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    49
     May 7, 2011 at 10:02 am
    Reply
  50. TWILisAwesome
    Posts: 2

    Excellent!

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    50
     May 7, 2011 at 11:03 am
    Reply
  51. crashoveryd
    Posts: 35

    one can help please ?

    #
    51
     May 7, 2011 at 1:35 pm
    Reply
    • Frederik
      Posts: 4

      Just a guess:
      Make sure you assign Cycles materials to your objects, Blender Mats will be rendered black.

      #
      51.1
       May 20, 2011 at 3:40 am
      Reply
  52. Ian
    Posts: 1

    I cannot install it without getting problems, for Linux or Windows. The problem is: the render appears black!! I would like some help. Running 64 bit Windows 7 / Ubuntu (need help for windows)

    #
    52
     May 7, 2011 at 1:37 pm
    Reply
    • necrorrr
      Posts: 14

      Do you have a nVidea card with the latest drivers?
      if you have a ATI card try the CPU only build.

      #
      52.1
       May 8, 2011 at 4:34 am
      Reply
  53. varexnet32
    Posts: 15

    thanks Jonathan,
    i’m looking for some answers about gpu ???
    what this thing mean ? and how it would help us?
    i have a simple computer with intel card so do i have this option ?

    #
    53
     May 8, 2011 at 11:02 am
    Reply
  54. crashoveryd
    Posts: 35

    help

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    54
     May 8, 2011 at 7:28 pm
    Reply
  55. jacobvalenta
    Posts: 3

    Thank you so much for helping to explore cycles :) I have tried once before but gave up. Very clear cut, thank you

    #
    55
     May 9, 2011 at 6:35 pm
    Reply
  56. crashoveryd
    Posts: 35

    Hello I have a problem rendering of light in the bottom right you can see the image in real time and at the top left but the rendering in the rendering of light is very low, however I put a light on the scene

    here is the image that shows the problem:

    http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=325553Bug.jpg

    Help please

    #
    56
     May 11, 2011 at 3:05 am
    Reply
  57. Kirill Krymov
    Posts: 1

    Hi!

    can you help me please. I cant find a way to control the texture (noise) displacement, do you know how I can do that?

    #
    57
     May 12, 2011 at 5:52 pm
    Reply
  58. Guywithacoolname
    Posts: 7

    I know it’s still a WIP, but does anyone know if we will get the old(Current) materials setting back along w/the epic cycles? or will the current options replace all the current settings?

    Thanks

    #
    58
     May 13, 2011 at 1:14 am
    Reply
  59. shane smith
    Posts: 28

    This is an exciting addition!

    Thanks to the devs, and thanks BC for this tutorial.

    Here’s what I created with it yesterday:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/78289421@N00/5723469202/#/photos/78289421@N00/5723469202/lightbox/

    #
    59
     May 15, 2011 at 1:57 pm
    Reply
  60. yoji
    Posts: 2

    Very good feature! Tested on win64, very fast and easy to use. Test : http://www.yojigraphics.com/images/stories/Yoji/projets3d/Black_panthercycleweg.jpg

    #
    60
     May 16, 2011 at 5:44 pm
    Reply
  61. thordwilk
    Posts: 3

    Very nice addition, made a render with it using a wip mech I’m building.
    http://thordwilk.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mechtestwip05.png

    #
    61
     May 17, 2011 at 9:23 am
    Reply
  62. voodoc
    Posts: 4

    Wow, this is the first I have heard of Cycles, and I’m excited! :D I bought Octane and fell in love with it after I saw your video overview, and this type of renderer built into Blender will be awesome. My main issue with Octane was that I couldn’t find a way to make animations, and I was having problems with camera and light settings when switching between programs. It looks like I wont be having those issues any more :)

    P.S. I’ve been a follower of your tutorials for quite some time now, and they are always very helpful and informative. Keep up the good work!

    Thanks Again,
    Ben

    #
    62
     May 19, 2011 at 3:13 am
    Reply
  63. animeman
    Posts: 14

    Does this mean that we will be loosing our old material system?? The reason I ask is it seems that we would loose flexibility IMHO.

    #
    63
     May 19, 2011 at 4:29 am
    Reply
  64. voodoc
    Posts: 4

    The node based materials should actually offer more in terms of flexibility and control. That said, the old material system was very easy to work with. For some of my more diagrammatic renderings, I actually prefer the simplicity of the original materials and render engine. My question is how this system will work with SSS. I know in Octane you could fake some of this by using an RGBspectrum on the transparency node, but it isn’t ideal. (I haven’t had a chance to play around with Cycles yet, so it may already have been addressed.)

    Features like this make me feel sorry for Blender’s competition, but I’m not complaining. :D

    Best Regards,
    Ben

    #
    64
     May 19, 2011 at 1:19 pm
    Reply
  65. Frederik
    Posts: 4

    I have another question though:
    when I preview in Cycles everything looks fine, except for some graininess. So I rendered with 2000 Passes overnight, and the image was much clearer, but I as soon as Blender completes the last pass the imgae turns really dark. I have unchecked “compositing”, “use Nodes” and anything I found that has to do with post processing, still at the end of the render the image jumps to black. Please help, I found nothing on google

    #
    65
     May 20, 2011 at 3:43 am
    Reply
    • lokojon
      Posts: 1

      I have the same problem.
      Frederik: Did you find the solution?

      #
      65.1
       Nov 22, 2011 at 9:48 am
      Reply
  66. chipchap3000
    Posts: 39

    Johnathon, is there any way to render fur particles in cycles?

    #
    66
     Dec 22, 2011 at 7:12 am
    Reply
    • jonathanwilliamson
      Posts: 1761

      Hi Oliver,

      Currently strands are not supported and so the only way to render them in Cycles is to convert them to a mesh by pressing “Apply” on the Particle System Modifier.

      #
      66.1
       Dec 22, 2011 at 9:33 am
      Reply

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