To view the particle ID number in a viewport, see Displaying and Hiding Particles and their Attributes.
Getting Information about Particle-based Simulations
To help you use particles in scripting or expressions, you can get information on the particles in a scene. This applies to particle, fluid, and explosion simulations.
When a particle is born, it has its own unique identification number (ID) that stays unique throughout the simulation. This number can be used for identifying particles for scripting.
The particle ID is distinct from the particle index in the array of particles. The particle index is the position of the particles within the collection of particles. As particles die, indices are reused.
The particle’s ID is guaranteed to be unique throughout the lifetime of the cloud whereas the particle indices are reused many times.
When a particle dies, so does its ID number so that they are never recycled, even when they have a duration of forever for their life span (see Setting the Particle’s Lifetime).
However, if the particle is tagged when it dies, a new particle keeps the tagged state. Those new particles are generated in the index left unoccupied by a tagged particle that died.
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To view the particle ID number in a viewport, see Displaying and Hiding Particles and their Attributes. |
You can get information on the selected particle cloud or find out the number of particles in a scene. This information may be useful to use in scripting or expressions.
To get information on a particle cloud
• Select the particle cloud and choose Edit > Info Selection (or press Shift+Enter). The Info Selection dialog box displays the following information.
To get information on particles in the scene
• Choose Edit > Info Scene (or press Ctrl+Enter) and click the Components tab to see the number of particles in the scene, as shown here.
Autodesk Softimage v.7.5