Particle objects
A particle object is a collection of particles that share the same attributes. You can create particle
objects containing a single particle or millions of particles. Each particle in a
scene belongs to some particle object. An overview of how you create particle effects
follows:
Creating particles
You can create particles several ways:
- Place particles in the workspace with the (see Create particles).
- Create a particle emitter, which generates and animates the motion of particles automatically
(see Emitters).
- Cause particles that collide with geometry to create new particles upon contact (see
Particle collisions).
Set display attributes
You change the way particles look with several techniques:
Animate the particles
You can animate particle motion several ways:
- Set the position, velocity, or acceleration attributes of particles. You can also
set keys to animate an entire particle object’s translate, scale, and rotate attributes.
See Animate particles
- Apply fields, such as gravity, to particles (see Overview of fields).
- Turn geometry into a collision object and bounce particles off it (see Particle collisions).
- Make the particles follow a moving goal object (see Goals).
Render the particles
Rendering is the final step to creating particle effects. Depending on the render
type you select, you render the particles with hardware rendering or software rendering.
See Choose how particles render.