xpPainter lets you interactively paint particles onto the surface of scene geometry and then manipulate those painted particles further.

Selecting xpPainter will not add anything to your Objects Manager, but your cursor will alter and there will be grayed-out settings in your Attributes Manager.

To use the tool, select an object in the Objects Manager.

You can drag an existing emitter into the Emitter field or, if you don't do that, the tool will automatically create a new emitter for you.

Note: If a new emitter is created, the Spawn Only setting will be enabled automatically.

The ‘grayed-out’ settings in the Attributes Manager when xpPainter is first selected.

xpPainter will not work in frame zero; moving onto frame one (1) will activate the settings.

Whichever frame you move to, on playback, particles will only be emitted once the timeline reaches that frame.

You can paint on multiple different frames if desired.

When you start painting, particles will be created with the parameters in the tool's interface - Color, Speed, etc.

You can also specify the particle group.

The ‘activated’ settings in the Attributes Manager.