Is there a way to place particles from a particle system to precise coordinates?

I’m working on a scientific data viz project and managed to generate a mesh representing the data only with vertices. It looks nice. But I think using particle might open more opportunities. Especially for animation.

However I can’t find any exemple of people manipulating the positions of particles directly.

So I am starting to wonder if it can be done at all…

Ideally, I would like to create a particle system and generate particles but at given coordinate in space, instead of the default random shuffle we have with particles.

Anyone did this before and care to share?

You can put particles directly on vertices. Use these settings:

Type: Hair Advanced checked.
Emit from: Verts

Then play around with the settings to get what you want. You can even create an object to substitute for the particle. Just select Object in the Render section of the particle options, and select the object you want to emit.

It’s not exactly as elegant as the solution I imagined in my head, but it is indeed an interesting angle I had not consider. I will look into it. Thanks !