Settings Controls

In the Settings controls, you can set the motion blur controls for all the emitters on the clip, and the global settings for the Particles operator.

Enable

Turn on the Enable option to use motion blur. When you do this, the other four Blur controls become available.

Preview

Enable this option to see the blur in the viewport when the Current Frame indicator is parked. While the viewport is playing, motion blur is always displayed (if the Enable button is turned on).

Note: Performance may decrease if Preview is always enabled while you are adding and editing particles.

Samples

Controls the number of frames that are averaged to produce the blur effect; the higher the number, the smoother the blur—but the more time it takes to draw the frames.

Blur Amount

Controls the amount of the frame over which the blur occurs. When set to 100%, the particles are blurred over the entire interval between the current frame and the next one. When set to 50%, the particles are blurred over only the first half of the interval between the current frame and the next one.

Intensity Adjust

Can be used as an additional scale factor to control the visibility of intense particles. (Here, intense particles means the particle type has the Intense option enabled.) When these particles are motion blurred, their intensity can change; Intensity Adjust counteracts this intensity change.

Note: You cannot animate these blur settings.

In addition to effects like propellers, you can affect the trail of a particle by using motion blur. To do this, increase the number of samples or the spin.

Particle Display Accuracy

This setting determines how accurately particles are drawn in the viewport when the clip is not playing. Usually, you set this to 30 for complete accuracy. However, if many particles need to be calculated, or the current frame is far from the start of the clip, you can decrease the accuracy for better response.

Note: Particles are always calculated from the first frame, so there may be a delay as you go farther from the start of the clip.

Background

Click this button to choose an operator from the workspace to use as a background image in the Particles operator. It is only used for reference, so it does not appear in the final rendered result. The feature is similar to the Background option in the Mask operator.