Applying a particle system?

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Im stuck on this part of a tutorial at 48:00 into this vid...

https://youtu.be/gQUO9yL2vYQ?t=2888

He does 3 steps...

Hit convert on the particle system
Delete the particle system
Hit Ctrl+J

It goes fine untill i hot Ctrl+J, i get the message...

"Active object is not a selected mesh"

[*P0P$*FR3$H3NM3Y3R*]

When he converts the particles they become real, each particle becomes its own object. I think upon converting, it selects them all automaticly, however there might not be an active object (in a multiselection this is usually the last object selected).
Just make sure that with all your particles selected hit CTRL-Click to select one of them (the branch) to become the active object (brighter orange outline) and then hit CTRL-J to merge them into one object.
In general this message usually means that no object is active or you are trying to merge different types of object such as a Curve and a Mesh Object, as you can only merge objects of similar type.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Bit of a follow up question, can i tweak the position of individual particles before i apply it?

For example some of my branches bases stick out of the big main tree branches, if i could just tweak them a little the rest are fine :)

[*P0P$*FR3$H3NM3Y3R*]

Originally posted by Karmaterrorᵁᴷ:

Bit of a follow up question, can i tweak the position of individual particles before i apply it?

For example some of my branches bases stick out of the big main tree branches, if i could just tweak them a little the rest are fine :)

Particles are placed based on their origin point afaik, that means with branches for instance you would want the origin of the particle object at the branchs first ring of verts. (basicly at it's base). Depending on where you emit from /face, vertex / volume you would get different results, for trees you'd want to emit from faces. Using the weight painting to density setting you can have some control over where your branches appear on your trunk object.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Yeah iv done the weight paint an played around with the settings. Seems there is always one or two branches that just dont sit right.

Kind of hoped there was a way to drag individual particles (branches) around to fine tune it. Thinking i might just stretch the tree mesh out a bit where needed to cover the bits that stick out :)

[*P0P$*FR3$H3NM3Y3R*]

Originally posted by Karmaterrorᵁᴷ:

Yeah iv done the weight paint an played around with the settings. Seems there is always one or two branches that just dont sit right.

Kind of hoped there was a way to drag individual particles (branches) around to fine tune it. Thinking i might just stretch the tree mesh out a bit where needed to cover the bits that stick out :)

Well once the particle system is applied and your objects converted to meshes you could of course manually drag haywire stuff into place :)
To isolate stuff the select linked/ by material option can be pretty handy.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Ahh cool that should work perfect, thanks again for the help :)

[*P0P$*FR3$H3NM3Y3R*]

Originally posted by Karmaterrorᵁᴷ:

Ahh cool that should work perfect, thanks again for the help :)

Depending on your workflow and particle density you gotta see if its of advantage to either CTRL-J Join all the particles before the cleanup process or after. Comes down to preference and proficiency with the selection methods.