Adjusting Emitters

If you understand how the emitter links to its parent, please read the following section for further adjustments to the emitter itself.
Please visit the official web site for the introduction to particles.

Emitter Settings

Emit On / Off

You can define when the emitter starts to emit and when to stop by clicking the On/Off buttons in the Emitter Settings section. Once you click any one of the two buttons, you set an Emit key on the timeline. Therefore, one emitter is able to send particles intermittently.

Quota & Emit Rate

  • Quota - This defines how many particles are provided during playback. Once the amount of the particle alive hits the Quota, the emitter pauses to send off particles.
  • EmitRate - This enforces the emitter to eject a specified number of particles per second.
 

Emit Volume
&
Position

Keep in mind that there is an invisible cube container in which emitters are distributed.

  • EmitVolume - There are three parameters that modify the dimension of the container. Since the emitters spread evenly within this container, they can create an illusion that the volume is expanding.
  • Position - These X-Y-Z parameters move the cube of emitters to a specific position in your project.


(100, 100, 100)


(0, 100, 100)


(100, 0, 100)


(100, 100, 0)

 

Direction

The emitter with a sufficient Velocity can send particles in a direction determined by Longitude and Latitude.

  • Longitude - This value sets the angle on the floor. 0 degree sets the direction along the positive X-axis. The range is from -180 to 180 degrees.
  • Latitude - This value angles up and down to the north and south. The range is from -90 to 90 degrees, with 90 degrees set the up direction.


(0, 0)


(90, 0)


(-135, 0)


(0, 90)


(0, -45)

 
 

Spread
&
Diagonal

To understand these two parameters, you can think of a pyramid. The top of the pyramid is the position for the emitter and it ejects particles straight to the bottom of the pyramid.

  • Random Seed: Activate this checkbox to randomly emit particles with each simulation. You can drag the slider to set the emitters to the desired positions.

 

 
  • Spread - This value decides the angle of the two opposite sides (the red and green lines in the illustration as Diagonal equals to 0) of the pyramid. The range is from 0 to 180.
  • Diagonal - This value specifies the rotation angle of the diagonal line (the blue line in the illustration) of the pyramid bottom. The range is also from 0 to 180. Please notice that the area will be maximized when the Diagonal is set to 45 and 135 degrees.


Diagonal = 0 degree


Diagonal = 45 degrees


Diagonal = 90 degrees

 

Diagonal value changes from 0 to 90 degrees"

 

Velocity & Direction Randomness

  • Velocity - This value assigns the speed to each particle for moving. The range is from 0 to 99999.

  • DirectionRandomness - Initially, each particle moves along a path of a fixed straight line. This attribute distorts this line so the particles move individually along different distorted lines. The range is from 0 to 359. Each particle slightly changes its direction randomly in accordance with the angle from x, y and z axis. It is useful when you want the particles to imitate the motion of the snow or falling leaves.


Direction Randomness = 0


Direction Randomness = 30

Please refer to the Moving, Rotating Emitters section for more information.