Heavy/sheet rain in scene

[stevesideas]

I'm creating a scene that requires heavy rain effects. I'm currently using Tyflow but even that doesn't create a great result because you see the individual droplets of rain and generally with the rain I'm talking about it's more like blanket of rain with very hard to distinguish rain drops. Plus, adding motion blur to all the particles is a nightmare for render time.

I've though using aftereffects particles (trapcode etc) but that doesn't take into considering 3d objects and obstructing geometry.

Any ideas how to create a very realistic effect like this? I'm thinking particles isn't the way to go....but not sure.

[fixeighted]

Maybe do a mix of both?; meaning something 3D for the bounced parts and then a layer or more, depending on scene depth, of 2D to further increase the intensity effect.
It's a bit scene-dependent so there are likely some tricks to fake bounces in 2D also if necessary.

[Joelaff]

I have often used sprite particles where the sprites are preblurred streaks.

Stuff like soft fractal noise patterns on transparency planes can help fill in some density. Some sort of fog helps too, like a VRay VolumeGrid with no source file (solid volume you shade with very light smoke density).

Possibly some AE type rain on transparent planes in 3d space could help too.

You really only need the higher quality stuff close to camera. Often on live action shoots due to time or money there is just a water truck spray in the FG, but the BG just gets a wet down.

Also, I think I found GPU might have been much faster for this. But it might be there way around