Emit from Parent System

Particles are emitted from each particle of the selected parent system.

Tips for playing: Remember those particles can multiply quickly. If you end up with more particles than you thought possible, adjust the amounts for Particles/sec, Direction and Velocity.

When ‘Emit from Parent System’ is the selected Emitter Type, the following options become available:

Parent System

If emitting from a parent system, this option lets you choose any system above the selected one. Primary is the default.

Emitter from Parent Behavior

The dropdown menu contains four options: Continuous, Emit on Parent Bounce, From Parent Speed, At Parent End of Life

• Continuous is the standard default behavior, it continuously emits particles.
• Emit on Parent Bounce will emit particles when the parent particle has a Bounce event (see Physics Simulations > Bounce )
• From Parent Speed will use the Speed of the parent particle to determine how many particles are emitted. The speed is used as a percentage of the Particles/sec set for this system. If the parent particle is not moving, no particles are emitted. As it speeds up, more particles are emitted from the parent.
• At Parent End of Life holds off on emitting any particles from the parent until it reaches the end of its lifespan. Very useful for effects that need to spawn particles when they die off.

Emitting at Parent End of Life

Emission over Parent Particle Life

For more control over when the particles will emit from the parent, use the Emission over Parent Particle Life curve. The lifetime of the parent particle is across the horizontal axis, and the vertical axis is the Emission rate of this system. When the Emission rate is at 100, it will be emitting what you have set in the Particles/sec parameter below.

Particles/sec

Controls how many particles are born each second from each Parent particle.

NOTE that leaving this at a high value can increase the particle count for your scene significantly as it becomes a multiple of every parent particle. If your performance slows down, you may want to check the total Particle Count (found at the bottom of the Show Systems group).

Dialing up or down the Particles/sec here can control how solid a trail of particles will look. For instance, here is the same set up with the second system’s Particle/sec set to 5, and to 30:

Emit Probability

Emit Probability sets what percentage of the parent particles will emit child particles. At the default setting of 100%, all parent particles become emitters. Here is the same setup shown above, but with Emit Probability changed to 50%:

Particle > Color from Parent

When the emitter type is set to Emit from Parent System, you can set whether the color of the particles is controlled by their parent particle using the Color from Parent control in the Particle group. This is a percentage that says how much the parent color is mixed with the color from Set Color. At the default 100%, the color comes entirely from the parent. At 0%, the color is entirely driven by the Set Color parameter.