Emitters generate moving or stationary particles as an animation plays. You can use emitters to create smoke, fire, fireworks, rain, and similar objects.
Maya includes the following types of emitters:
When you select a NURBS surface or curve and add a default emitter, you create a point emitter that emits from all CVs. Most CVs do not lie exactly on the surface of the object. When you select a polygonal surface and add a default emitter, it emits from all vertices, which do lie on the surface of the object.
When you create any type of emitter, a particle object is automatically created and connected to it. The connected particle object originally has no particles. As the animation plays and the emitter generates particles, the particle count of the connected particle object increases. We refer to the connected particle object as the emitted particle object.
The connection between the emitter and emitted particle object is not a spatial relationship. The emitted particle object’s attributes define the appearance and other characteristics of the emitted particles. The emitter’s attributes control the initial position, direction, quantity, and velocity of the emitted particles.
