When Objetcts are set, you can copy instances of them instead of particles. In this way, you can distribute asteroids instead of simple spheres or gas particles, for example.
The parameter at right of combobox is object index. Colors, texture and shader settings follows settings of object filter, not to that of particles.
If the original objects is not required, just invalidate it by a checkbox. (Copied instances remain.)
Zindaiji3 does not have rotation parameters for each particles, so that all copies of object look same direction.
Rendering fine 3D objects takes much larger time comparing to the simple spheres.
In pseudo-objects mode, billboard polygon with texture is used. The texture is automatically generated according to the camera position and direction of lights.
Note that though rendering is much faster, relative directions between camera and particles are only approximate ones and not accurate ones.
If camera approaches too close, you can see pixels of texture. The resolution of texture for pseudo-object can be changed in Texture setting dialog.
Also, you must Z-sort particles or clip tranparent region by shader.
When using pseudo-object, set original object near origin with size about 1. Otherwise, object overflows beyond texture size or become too small.
Pseudo objects display objects as copies of same single image. Thus, it can not reflect point lighting in principle.
By setting "Normal Map" for both object and billboard display modes, you can use information of normal vectors and can use point lightings.
The center object in above image is an original object that gives normal map information. The left and right images are pseudo objects with normal map. From a same image, different billboard texture is formed according to the relative position to the light source.
For a first look, normal mapped image looks like true object. However, by looking the intersection to the cube, you can see that it is just a flat polygon.
Pseudo objects do not cast shadow, or not recieve shadow exactly. Also wide camera angle is not recommended especially, fish-eye rendering.
Display spheres with same method of Pseudo-objects. Much faster than rendering spheres.