I had trouble finding out the best way to simulate particle billboards with cycles, so I had a play myself.
I used object and set a “Track To” constraint on the object used for the particles. It doesn’t have that fancy UV split of the non-cycles version, but it’s good for basic billboard effects.
I’ve attached my .blend (v 2.72b) with the results.
I was wondering if anyone here is able to and interested in writing a tutorial to show others how to do it.
Attachments
DVSquareTest_Cycles.blend (1.34 MB)