File Tab

The File Tab contains options for handling the clipboard and file commands.

You can save the particle motion of an emitter using the Save Motion button. The motion will take into account wind, gravity, and other options. It effectively freezes the particle motion; the particles will move just as they did when the motion was saved. Changing the Emitter settings, clearing/adding wind and gravity controllers, and so on, will have no impact.

• Save motion is a great time-saver for network-rendered scenes or scenes that require heavy calculations for collisions. Once you’ve saved the motion, it doesn’t need to be calculated again. To use this feature, get your particles moving the way you want. Then make sure your scene plays back without any pauses - this means that ParticleFX has finished its calculations. Now, you can click the Save Motion button to save out the .pfx file. (If you look at the emitter’s Object Properties Panel, you’ll see the .pfx file referenced in the FX emitter custom object entry). Now save the scene and you’re done. Remember, you can even clear wind, collision, and gravity controllers without affecting particle motion.

When this feature is active, the Save Motion button will be ghosted. To clear a loaded motion, click Clear Motion. You can also load the motion file into another emitter using Load Motion.

• Copy and Paste - these clipboard buttons allow you to copy the settings of a controller and apply them to another.
• Save and Load - These buttons add custom saved ParticleFX controllers to your scene.
• Playback Mode - works with the motion and determines how it will playback.
  
  • Normal - indicates that it will playback normally, starting at frame zero.
  • Key - the motion will be started every time a keyframe is encountered for the emitter.
  • Parent Key is similar, but uses the parent item’s keyframes.
  • Parent Particles and Parent Particles (end) work like the identically named Nozzle options. Of course, the particles come from the motion file instead of Emitter settings. Make sure that the parent’s Particle size is set greater than 0.
  • Parent Recoded CP uses the Recode CP option on the Collision controller, which must be the parent of the emitter. Playback will occur when collisions are detected. Use this for effects like splashes in water from rain drops, where one emitter provides the rain and another emitter (with this option set) creates the splashes from the detected collisions with a ground plane.
  • Parent Particles (fix) - Once the parent particles are fixed in a collision then this motion is played back.