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Is it possible to hide a particle emitter object in the 3D view while keeping particles visible?
I know you can do this in the render with the Render Emitter setting, but this does not affect the viewport.

Sometimes the emitter can get in the way, though it's still useful to know where it is. The ideal solution then is to make it drawn as a wireframe, but setting the Maximum draw type to Wire or Bounds causes all the particles to be rendered as wireframes or bounding boxes too.

Setting the emitter object's draw type would work, except it also changes the way the particles for that emitter are drawn:

enter image description here enter image description here

Is there anyway to make particle emitters hidden or less distracting while keeping the actual particles unaffected (still rendered as solid or textured)?

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  • $\begingroup$ if you are emitting from a mesh, could you not just change it visibility settings? $\endgroup$
    – Vader
    Oct 26, 2013 at 21:48
  • $\begingroup$ @JebediahKerman I assume you mean the settings in the outliner. The problem with that is it hides the particles as well. $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Oct 26, 2013 at 21:56
  • $\begingroup$ what about under the display options for the mesh. You could change type to Bounds $\endgroup$
    – Vader
    Oct 26, 2013 at 22:15
  • $\begingroup$ @JebediahKerman I already stated in my question why setting draw types doesn't work. Please see my edit. $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Oct 26, 2013 at 22:20
  • $\begingroup$ I think i found a way using the mask modifier $\endgroup$
    – Vader
    Oct 26, 2013 at 22:21

3 Answers 3

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Another way (similar to Michal's answer) is to use a Mask modifier:

  1. Add an empty vertex group to the particle emitter by pressing the + button in Object Data > Vertex Groups:

Add a vertex group

  1. Add a mask modifier after the particle system with the empty vertex group:

enter image description here

There was a bug in 2.69; in order for the mask modifier to work you had to assign and remove some geometry to the vertex group. It has since been fixed.

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  • $\begingroup$ I was gonna post the same thing. $\endgroup$
    – Vader
    Oct 26, 2013 at 22:26
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    $\begingroup$ As of 2.77, you don't even need to create and assign a vertex group anymore. Just assign a mask modifier and leave it as is with nothing under "Vertex Group". It works for me, at least. $\endgroup$
    – Highstaker
    Dec 31, 2016 at 10:12
  • $\begingroup$ I'm refusing to do such a ugly workaround, how about fixing this once and for all??? $\endgroup$
    – Markus Bawidamann
    Oct 7, 2020 at 19:12
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This is a really old issue, but for anyone coming here recently you can now disable the emitter from the viewport the same way you would to the render. The option is located in the "Viewport Display" section of the particle settings. The option looks exactly the same as it does in the "Render" section where you would hide the emitter from renders, to begin with.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you! Just what I was looking for. $\endgroup$
    – Buzz
    Jan 9, 2021 at 17:51
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Create a bounding box around the emitter.

Add a boolean modifier to the emitter, set the mode to difference and chose the bounding box.

Ensure the particle system is applied before the boolean modifier (order in modifier stack)

Hide the bounding box.

Properties panel with emitter selected

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  • $\begingroup$ Interesting solution, but it can get clunky with animated emitter objects. $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Oct 27, 2013 at 2:23
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    $\begingroup$ @gandalf3 well you could probably eliminate the clunk by parenting "Bounding box" as a child of "Cube" but it still adds unnecessary objects and computation time... if you have a 5M-tri mesh, I can't imagine that a Boolean modify would speed up your viewport. $\endgroup$
    – wchargin
    Oct 27, 2013 at 3:02

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