2009

The items in this group include a Thickness spinner, along with three option
buttons that determine how the fragments are formed.
TIP There is no automatic way to hide the distribution object that explodes into
fragments. To create the illusion that an object is exploding, you must either set
the original object to be invisible at the start of the explosion, as described in Add
Visibility Track
on page 3611, or move or scale the original object so it doesn't remain
in view.
Thickness Sets the thickness of the fragments. At 0, the fragments are
single-sided with no thickness. When greater than 0, the fragments are
extruded, at fragmentation time, by the amount specified. The outer and inner
surfaces of the fragment use identical smoothing, which is picked up from
the object-based emitter. The edges of the fragments are not smoothed.
The three options that follow specify how the object fragments.
All Faces Each face of the object becomes a particle. This results in triangular
particles.
Number of Chunks The object breaks into irregular fragments. The Minimum
spinner, below, specifies the minimum number of fragments that will appear.
The method of calculating the chunks may result in more fragments than
specified.
Minimum Determines a number of "seed" faces in the geometry. Each seed
face collects connecting faces surrounding it until all available faces are
exhausted. Any leftover faces become unique particles, thus increasing the
minimum number of fragments.
Smoothing Angle The fragments are broken based on the angles between
face normals, as specified in the Angle spinner. Generally, the higher the Angle
value, the fewer the number of fragments.
Angle Sets the amount of smoothing angle.
Non-Event-Driven Particle Systems | 3059