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Introductory Tutorial 109
The rendered par ticles appear in a window.
The defau lt particle shape is a tetrahedron, a
four-sided triangular solid. Its geometry is
very simple, so the system c an handle many
particles quickly and efficiently, but it gives a
good idea of how particles are behaving. Other
basicshapesarealow-polysphereandacube;
Particle Flow also lets you use any scene object
as par ticle geometry.
Modify the par ticle system in Par ticle V iew:
1.
Press the 6 key to open Particle View . The
part icle source icon need not be selected.
Tip: You can also open Particle View from the
command panel when a Particle Flow source
icon is selected.
1. Event display
2. Particle diagram
3. Global event
4. Bir th event
5. Depot
Particle View is where you manage and edit
theparticlesystem.Themainwindow,known
as the
event display ,containsthe particle
diagram
, which describes the particle system.
The default system starts with a
global event ,
w ith the same name as the Particle Flow icon,
followed by a
birth event ,containingaBirth
operator and several others that define the
system’s initial properties. Each operator’s
name is followed by its most important setting
or settings in p arentheses. Above the event
display is a menu bar, a nd below is the
depot ,
containing all operators available for use in the
particle system. For more information about
this dia log, see
Part icle View (page 2–121) .