Basic Particle Concepts

An emitter includes particle types. Particle types consist of images and various properties that determine how the particles look and behave. You can direct the particles with deflectors, as well as add masks and selections to block areas where you do not want the particles to go.

Particles

Particles are the visible entities in the particle system. You have no direct control over individual particles; once they are "born" they behave based on the values set in their particle type.

Particle Types

A particle type is the collection of properties that determine how its particles look and behave. A particle type consists of an image (or images), a color gradient, an opacity gradient, and various properties such as velocity, size, and weight.

Emitters

An emitter is the invisible object from which particles emit. Emitters come in four basic types: point, line, circle (includes ellipse), and area. Emitters, unlike particles, can be controlled directly and moved over time.

An emitter includes one or more particle types and many properties. Several of its properties are scaling factors (or master parameters) which scale the corresponding particle type properties.

For example, an emitter has two particle types: Stars and Squares. Stars has a Velocity of 40, and Squares has a Velocity of 15. If the emitter's Velocity scaling factor is set to 200%, the effective velocity for Stars particles is 80 and for Squares particles is 30.

Note: Changing an emitter scaling factor makes no difference to the particles if the corresponding particle type property is set to 0.

Deflectors

A deflector is an invisible (or visible) barrier with which particles collide. Deflectors are straight or curved line segments or a series of line segments.