How to make particle systems of particle systems?

Question

I have a sphere with a particle system that adds petals to turn it into a flower. I want to then create a particle system to distribute flowers across a plane. However, when I try to use the sphere as a dupli object, it only uses the sphere, not the rest of the flower. How do I get it to use the entire flower? Sorry if this is confusing, I'm happy to clarify if there's any confusion.

EDIT: I tried the particle instance modifier, but couldn't get it to work. I'm linking the file, and hopefully, that will help. Sorry that it's a bit messy.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/54020/particle-system-within-particle-system and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5961/how-can-particles-be-emitted-from-particles/ or https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/27818/is-it-possible-to-recursively-instance-object-particles/ — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Oct 09 '18 at 02:27
Possible duplicate of Is it possible to recursively instance object particles? — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Oct 09 '18 at 02:30

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 11 '19 at 20:18

I know of no way to be able to make a particle system with particle systems underneath. However, there is a way you can convert the flower particles into mesh. You have to start by applying any modifiers that are given to the objects being used in the particle systems applied to the flower.

Then you select the flower, go to the modifiers tab in the Properties bar, and click the convert button on each particle modifier. The particles are now converted into a mesh. Now join the petals, nectar stems, and sphere together so it's all one mesh. Now you are able to make a particle system that uses this flower.

This does make the flower have more vertices, so you may want to go try to reduce the number of vertices to save memory. Hope this helps

How to make particle systems of particle systems?

1 Answers1