Creating Effects Using Particles

You can create effects in CreativeStudio by using particles.

This page describes the basics of creating effects and how to configure color animations for particles.

Preparing to Create Effects with Particles

On the CreativeStudio menu, select CreateEffect.

The ParticleCtrCreationPanel dialog box appears, where you can enter a name for the particle.

In this example, we enter "color" for the name.

Entering the particle name

Enter a particle name, then click Apply and close or Apply to create the effect.

When you create a particle, CreativeStudio generates the following content.

Content name Description
<user-supplied-name>Model This is a model.
You can create multiple particle sets in a model and then layer them together.
You can then display or hide these particle sets, and expand or shrink, rotate, and move particles centered on the particle model.
<user-supplied-name>Particle This is a particle set.
You can use a particle set to configure particles and create particle animations.
<user-supplied-name>Material This is the default material used only for particle effects.
<user-supplied-name>Texture This is the texture used for the particle effect.
<user-supplied-name>Emitter This is an emitter.
You can use the emitter to specify the particle set into which particles are emitted.
You can also control how many particles are emitted and for how long.

Each type of content is named according to the particle name you entered earlier.
Ex: colorModel

Checking Particles

Check the created particle.

Created particle image

Click the Play button in CreativeStudio to show the effect created in the Preview panel.

Setting Particle Effects

To make it easier to check the color animations you are creating, you can configure the direction of movement of particles and the number of frames.

Configuring the Particle Movement Direction

Use the particle set Properties panel to set the direction of movement of particles.

In this example, we configure the particles to move upwards at a uniform velocity.

(1) To display the particle-set panel in the Properties panel of the main window, click once on colorParticle in CreativeStudio's Contents panel.

Note: Double-clicking on the colorParticle icon opens the particle set Properties panel in a separate window.

Particle set Properties panel image

(2) From the Position category group box, select Add in specified direction and press Add.

Particle Set Panel Position

(3) Now that the Add in specified direction item has been added, set these values:

Direction Y: 1
Speed: 0.2

With these settings, particles move upwards at a uniform velocity.

Particles moving upwards at a uniform velocity

Configuring the Timeline Panel

In the timeline panel of CreativeStudio's main window, change the last frame to 200.

The frame number cannot be changed when the Play button is pressed, so stop the preview to change the value.

Color Animation Settings

You can configure color animation for the particles moving upwards at a uniform velocity.

On the particle set Properties panel, change the color animation to Overwrite previous value.

Note: Overwrite previous value is a method of animation. The value of the previous frame is overwritten with the next value to be set.

Changing color animation absolute values

Use the Curve Editor panel to edit the animation.

Opening the Curve Editor Panel

On the CreativeStudio menu, click WindowCurve Editor.

For details on the Curve editor panel, click here.

Curvet panel image

When you open the Curve editor panel, colorParticle will appear at the top of the tree view. Click to expand the tree and show X, Y, and Z.

XYZ correspond to RGB color channels.

Creating Curves

Create animation curves for each of the X, Y, and Z color components of colorParticle.

Create animation curves as shown in the figures below.

Color animation curves

You can copy your curves by hitting Ctrl+C, and paste by hitting Ctrl+V.
You can save time by creating a curve for one color channel and then copying to other color channels and modifying as needed, instead of having to create from scratch each time.

After creating the color curves, you can check in the Preview window to see that the particles are animated, using the colors in the timing specified by the curves.

Particle animation

Configuring Random Particles

You can configure your animation to use random timings.

Configuring the Particle Set Panel

Change the color animation Playback options you just configured as shown below.

Setting the playback options for color animation

After changing the Frames per cycle value, you can run the Preview to confirm that the animation is changing randomly.

Playback options image

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