Apple Motion 2 - Manual (Page 576)

576 Chapter 8 Working With Particles
For particle systems containing multiple cells, the Emitter Dashboard parameters
simultaneously modify the effect of each cell’s parameters relative to one another. This
means that for a particle system consisting of two cells with different scale values,
changing the scale in the Dashboard resizes both cells simultaneously. For example,
increasing the scale in the Dashboard by 200 percent does not change the scale of
both cells to 200 percent. Instead, it multiplies the scale of each cell by 200 percent, so
that both are resized relative to their original scale values.
For this reason, the Dashboard parameters are displayed as percentages, since they
represent the percent at which these particle cell parameters are modified (when
multiple cells exist). When you modify the parameters of a single cell, the cell
parameters are adjusted directly (not in percentages).
Birth Rate: A slider defines how many particles are created every second.
Life: A slider defines how long each particle remains onscreen (in seconds) before
disappearing from existence.
Scale: A slider defines the size of each particle, relative to the original size of the cell.
Original particle system Particle system scaled to 200 percent
01112.book Page 576 Sunday, March 13, 2005 10:36 PM