Creating a Particle System

You can find all the various particle systems under the Create panel and also in the Create menu. To access these systems, click the Geometry category and select the Particle Systems subcategory from the drop-down list. All the particle systems then appear as buttons. Or you can select the Create Particles menu.

With the Particle Systems subcategory selected, click the button for the type of particle system that you want to use, and then click in a viewport to create the particle system emitter icon. The emitter icon is a gizmo that looks like a plane or a sphere and that defines the location in the system where the particles all originate. Attached to the icon is a single line that indicates the direction in which the particles move when generated. This line points by default toward the construction grid's negative Z-axis when first created. Figure 35.1 shows the emitter icons for each particle system type including, from left to right, Particle Flow Source; Super Spray; Spray, Snow, and Blizzard (which all have the same emitter icon); PArray; and PCloud.

Figure 35.1: The emitter icons for each particle system type

You can transform these icons using the standard transform buttons on the main toolbar. Rotating an emitter changes the direction in which the particles initially move.

After an icon is created, you can set the number, shape, and size of the particles and define their motion in the Parameter rollouts. To apply a material to the particles, simply apply the material to the system's icon. This material is applied to all particles included in the system.

Note 

Be aware that the particles are displayed as simple objects such as ticks or dots in the view-ports. To see the actual resulting particles, you need to render the scene file.

You can set the parameters for the Max particle systems in the Create panel when they are first created or in the Modify panel at any time. The simpler systems, Spray and Snow, have a single Parameters rollout, but the advanced systems-Particle Flow Source, Super Spray, and Blizzard-include multiple Parameters rollouts. The PArray and PCloud systems have similar multiple rollouts, with a few subtle differences, and the Particle Flow system includes several rollouts, but most of the action is with the Particle Flow window. The following sections describe how to use these rollouts to set the parameters for the various particle systems.