Autodesk 62205-051408-9001 User Guide - Page 379

Working with Particle Types ❚❘❘ 5. Change the emitter properties. After your first change, a red outline appears around the Particles preview to show you are changing a library emitter (and not an emitter object). 6. Click Transform to show the Transform controls. You can change Rotation for a line emitter, and Rotation and Size for an area or circle emitter. Note: These values are not used when you create an emitter object using the library emitter. They are used when you replace an emitter object with the library emitter. See Replacing Emitters. 7. If you want to use the modified emitter, click an Emitter tool in the Toolbar, and add it to the clip. Note: If you want the emitter to appear exactly as it does in the preview, use the tool that matches the Shape setting in the Emitter controls. To do this automatically, double-click the library emitter and the appropriate tool is selected. 8. If you want to ignore the changes you made, simply select another library emitter. The library emitter reverts back to how it was. Changes are not saved to the library unless you click Update Emitter in the Library controls. Modifying Particle Types Since many Emitter controls are scaling factors for particle type controls, you need to change the properties of a particle type to change specific particles. (Emitter controls change all particle types at the same time.) To become comfortable with all the particle type properties, you should play with them and observe changes to the result. Note: The order the particle types appear in the hierarchy (in Timeline or Workspace panel) is not important and cannot be changed. You can turn off a particle type (temporarily) by clicking the asterisk icon next to it in the Workspace panel. If you are not going to use it, you can delete it. If the particle type uses a multi-frame shape, you should consider deleting it to save memory. In the Timeline, you can animate many of the controls for a particle type. To modify a particle type: 1. Select the particle type in the Workspace panel. Working with Particle Types A particle type is the collection of properties that determine how its particles look and behave. A particle type consists of a shape image (or images), a color gradient, opacity gradient, and various properties such as velocity, size, and weight. The Particles controls and the Behavior controls are not available when a particle type is not selected in the Workspace panel. You also need the particle type selected to change its shape (in the Shape controls). The Particles preview shows only the particle type. Many of the changes you make to a particle type can be immediately seen in the preview. Note: If you see all particle types for the emitter, enable the Show Particle Types option in the Preview menu. 363