Direction

Since the Fields can also be used to define direction (vectors), the settings in this tab can be used to influence the vectors to a certain extent. This mainly affects the vector size and thus its contribution (or simply put: the its strength) and less the direction (even though the Invert Direction option does exactly that).

To make vectors visible you can, for example, place a Spherical Field into a Field Force.

 Directions

Length

You can select from the following options:

• No Remap: The length of the vectors will not change. However, certain Fields can produce unwanted results, e.g., extremely long vectors, that in turn produce unwanted results when the Normals are processed (you should then use a different option such as Use Value). These can be used for custom XPresso setups.

• Normalize: The vector length will be set to 1.

• Use Value: The Value channel provided by the Field will be used for the length. A Linear Field, for example, will then determine the vector length between left 0 and right 1.

• Inverse Square: This is a special case, which can be used in conjunction with Dynamics. The vectors for a Spherical Field will behave similarly to the brightness falloff of a physical light source. Very strong at maximum (sphere center) and inverse square abatement with increasing distance from the center. This corresponds, for example, to the physically correct behavior of a gravitation source.

Scale [-∞..+∞%]

This setting is a multiplier that affects the length of all vectors. For example, if a vector has a length of 4, this will be set to 2 if the Scale value is set to 50%.

Invert Direction

Contrary to the remaining settings, this option affects the vector orientation and rotates it 180° in the opposite direction.