Using Spawned Particles

Example: Setting up the particle system:

1. In the Perspective viewport, create a pyramid that's 5 units in all dimensions.

2. Create a cylinder with a radius and height of 3, and 6 sides.

3. In the center of the Perspective viewport, create a Super Spray emitter.

4. Set Speed in the Particle Motion group (Particle Generation rollout) to 3.0.

5. On the Particle Type rollout, choose Instanced Geometry, then in the Instancing Parameters group click Pick Object, and select the pyramid.

6. In the Viewport Display group of the Basic Parameters rollout, choose Mesh and set the Percentage of Particles to 100.

7. On the Particle Generation rollout, choose Use Rate, and set the spinner to 1.

8. Set Emit Start and Emit Stop to 0, set Display Until to 100, set Life to 10, and leave Variation at 0.

9. Under Particle Size, set Grow For and Fade For to 0.

10. Drag the time slider between frames 0 and 15.

    A single pyramid particle emerges from the emitter, moves up, and then dies and disappears at frame 10.

Example: Adding spawning effects:

1. On the Particle Spawn rollout, choose Spawn on Death.

2. Leave Spawns spinner at 1, and set the Multiplier to 2.

3. Set the Direction Chaos spinner to 50.

4. Drag the time slider slowly over frames 8 to 25 (approximately).

   At frame 10, two pyramids appear at the death of the original particle (because of the Multiplier setting), and move off in different directions (because of the Direction Chaos setting). All particles die after frame 20 because only one generation of spawned particles is specified.

5. Set Spawns to 4, and the Multiplier to 4.

6. Drag the time slider over frames 8 to 50.

   With each spawned generation the particles increase exponentially.

Example: To mutate the objects:

1. In the Object Mutation Queue group, click Pick Object, and then select the cylinder.

   The name of the cylinder appears in the list window.

2. Click Pick Object and select the pyramid. Then click Pick Object again, and select the cylinder. Your list now reads: Cylinder01, Pyramid01, Cylinder01.

3. Drag the time slider over frames 0 to 50.

   The pyramid appears over frames 0 to 10, then changes to four cylinders at frame 11, then 16 pyramids at the next spawning, and so on.