Particle

Realsoft Graphics Oy		Particle
	Particle Tools

Create clouds of 1D, 2D, or 3D particles by painting with the mouse.

The particle tool has the following options:

Class - Particle class, possible values are
- 1D Particle - is defined by a single point
- 2D Particle - consists of two points. So, it has properties such as 'direction' and 'length'.
- 3D Particle - is represented as a coordinate system
Pen - Pen type, possible values are
- Pencil - creates one particle for each mouse movement
- Brush - The number of particles created for each mouse movement can be defined through the Count field.
- Object - Emit particles from a selected curve. This creates particles along the selected NURBS curve. The number of particles generated for each mouse move event can be defined using the Count control.
Brush - controls the radius of the airbrush particle tool. The size is measured in pixels.
Count - Defines the number of particles created per each mouse movement when using the airbrush and selected object pens.
Project - controls the depth coordinate of particles added by the airbrush pen. Three choices are available:
- Disc: Particles are created inside a circular area defined by the brush in the input plane.
- Sphere: Each mouse movement adds a new spherical cloud of particles around the mouse position defined by the input plane. The diameter of the particle cloud is defined by the Brush size control.
- Surface: Particles are added to the surface of the selected objects. The surface also defines the orientation of the particles.
Size - controls the size of created particles. With 2D and 3D particles, the size controls the distance of the actual 3D points defining each particle. With 1D particles, the size is stored as a pointwise rendering attribute.
Rnd Size - randomize the particle size. Value 0 makes all particles equally big (as defined by Size above). Value 1 picks a totally random value between 0 and the value of the Size field.
Rnd Dir - randomize particle direction. Not available for 1D particles, which do not have any direction. Randomization is controlled with 2 values. The first value defines how much the axis of each particle changes randomly. In case of 3D particles, the controlled axis is the z axis. The second value (unused for 2d particles which are symmetric) controls the random rotation around the axis.
The greater the values, the more randomized direction each particle gets. For the first component, value 1.0 already randomizes the direction 180 degrees, but the original direction still dominates the average of directions. For the second random component, value 1.0 gives a totally random rotation around the axis.

For example, when brushing tree leaves onto a ground surface, the first random component can be zero, because the flat leaves lie along the ground. The second component should be one, so that leaves have a totally random direction on the ground. In other words, a suitable random value pair is "0 1".


Filler		Deformation Tools