2009

■ At Face Centers Faces
If you’ve converted your object to an editable mesh, and selected different
sub-object sections of it with vertex, edge, and face selection, as you switch
particle formation options, you’ll see the particles emit from different areas
of the object.
NOTE Use Selected SubObjects is applicable to patch object emitters only at
the patch and element sub-object levels, and is not applicable NURBS objects
used as emitters.
TIP You can best see the emission patterns by first setting Speed on the Particle
Generation rollout > Particle Motion group to 0. Move to a frame in which the
particles appear, and then choose the various particle formation options.
Display Icon group
Adjusts the display of the particle-system icon in the viewports. (The
particle-system icon is usually called the "emitter." In this case, however, it
doesn't actually emit particles, so we're avoiding the term.)
Icon Size Sets the overall size of the icon, in units.
Icon Hidden When on, the PArray icon is hidden in the viewports. Note that
the icon does not render, in any case. Default=off.
Viewport Display group
Specifies how the particles are displayed in the viewports.
Dots Displays the particles as dots.
Ticks Displays the particles as crosses.
Mesh Displays the particles as mesh objects. This results in slower viewport
redraws.
BBox For instanced geometry only, this displays each instanced particle,
whether a single object, a hierarchy, or a group, as a bounding box.
Percentage of Particles This spinner specifies the number particles displayed
in the viewports as a percentage of the number of rendered particles.
Default=10 percent.
Set the display percentage to 100 percent if you want to see the same number
of particles as will be rendered in your scene. However, this can considerably
slow viewport display.
3048 | Chapter 14 Space Warps and Particle Systems