For more information on particle simulations in general, see the Simulation (user) guide.
The Particle System is a collection of components that work together to simulate natural (and unnatural) masses like smoke, fluid, fire, sparks, dust, etc. A particle system contains these components:
• Particle Simulator Operators—generate the particles, represented by the particle cloud, as well as control how the particles evolve and are affected by forces, obstacles, and events.
• Particle Clouds—the root for all the particle system pieces (including its own primitive). It is actually a geometry (a cloud of points) that results from the operator’s activity.
• Particle Emitters—associated to a particle cloud, it consists of an object from which the particles are emitted and a set of properties defining how the particles are emitted, such as their rate (density), speed, and spread angle.
• Particle Types—these are like the recipes or templates that describe what each group of particles looks like (mass, size, shape, color, etc.). When you create a particle simulation, the particle simulator generates clusters to identify which particles belong of which particle type. The particle type also is where you can specify custom user parameters (called attributes) and add events.
• Particle Shaders—you can apply most shaders to particle types (not all particle shaders can be used in place of any shader, however). The shader is defined on the particle type.
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For more information on particle simulations in general, see the Simulation (user) guide. |