three.js - Adjusting opacity of individual particles

Question

I am trying to vary the opacity of particles as a function of their distance from a plane.

This issue describes my problem, and the answer a year ago was essentially "you can't". Opacity is apparently a parameter of a material, not an element, and hence individual particle opacity is not possible.

Has anything changed, is there any way I could achieve this? If individual particle colouring is possible, I imagine this isn't out of reach.

Cheers

Answer 1

EDIT - This answer shows how to set per-point opacity using a custom ShaderMaterial. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/67892506/1461008 for an approach using PointsMaterial.

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ParticleSystem has been renamed to PointCloud and then to Points.

Yes, you can create a Point Cloud and vary the alpha value of each particle's color dynamically.

In three.js, you can do this by setting the Point Cloud's material to be a ShaderMaterial having an attribute equal to the desired alpha value for each particle.

If ShaderMaterials, vertex shaders and fragment shaders are new to you, here is a really simple Fiddle that implements a Point Cloud with dynamic alphas: https://jsfiddle.net/7htvbwL6/.

EDIT: Updated fiddle

three.js r.143