Emitter

Emitter

• – All the emitters in your project are listed in this drop down list.

• – Click to remove selected emitter. Notice that this can not be undone once you remove a emitter.

Link to

• – This drop down list contains everything that can be taken as the linked target. Once you select an emitter, this list will be updated to the linked target accordingly.

• – Press this button and you will be prompted a dialog box in which the node hierarchy of the linked target shows.

• 

• You may link your emitter RELATIVELY to any node by simply click to one of them. Click here for more details about the node structure if your target is a character.

Import
Emitter

• – Press this button to locate the emitter files (*.vns). When the capacity of your custom folder is too small and you must move away your customized emitter files to another directory, this feature is quite useful to import them back.

Emitter Setting

Start Frame

• Start Frame – You may set the desired frame number for the emitter to start to emit particles. The range is from 1 to End Frame.

• End Frame – The emitter stops to eject particle after the frame number you set. The range is from Start Frame to 18000 (The maximum number of frames for each project).

• Repeat – Check if you want the emitter to emit constantly as you play back the project. The End Frame is disabled when this box is checked.

Example for Start Frame:

Motion: Right hand animation applied. (Hand animation template: count2)
Particle: (fire1, fire2, fire3, fire4) link to four fingers of the character.
Start Frame for each particle: (50, 100, 157, 220)

Quota
&
Emit Rate

• Quota – This defines how many particles are provided when the project plays back. Once the amount of the particle alive hits the number of Quota, the emitter pauses to send off particles.

• Emit Rate – This enforces the emitter to eject specified number of particles per second.

Emit Volume
&
Position

Please keep in mind first that there is an invisible cube container in which emitters distribute averagely.

• Emit Volume – There are three parameters which modify the dimension of the container. Since the emitters spread averagely within this container, they can create an illusion that the volume of the particles is increased.

• Position – These X-Y-Z parameters move the cube of emitters to a specific position in your project.

Direction

With the idea of longitude and latitude system, the emitter obtains the direction for sending off the particles. Please notice that the effect can be observed when the Velocity parameter increases.

• Longitude – This value decides the degree of 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 lifts up/push down the direction to the north/south pole. The range is from -90 to 90 degrees in which 90 degrees set the direction to up.

Spread
&
Diagonal

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

• 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.

Velocity
&
Direction Randomness

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

• Direction Randomness – 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.