Particle Selection

Owned by thomas (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 19 Oct, 2015
2 min read

This helper can be found in the “Tools” shelf. When you click on it RealFlow opens a new window and you are ready to select particles (all particle types are supported).

Quick Start

A typical application is to remove misbehaving particles during a simulation. Let's assume you have simulated a standard particles scene and detected some particles you want to remove:

 

Selected particles are displayed in green.

 

  • Stop the simulation and go to the frame where the misbehaving particles appear.
  • Select the emitter.
  • Open “Particle Selection” - a green frame appears around the viewport.
  • Draw a rectangle around the region of interest – selected particles are displayed in green (see first image above).
  • If you want to add particles to the current selection use the Shift key.
  • Particles are deselected with the Ctrl/Cmd key.
  • Click on “Add Group” to store the selection. A new group is created under “Selection”.

 

 

Now the particles are stored temporarily and can be deleted with “Remove particles”, but there is one important step left:

  • Right-click on the emitter in the → “Nodes” panel.
  • From the context menu choose Export > Export now... to save the new state.
  • Resume the simulation from the current frame.

Parameter Reference

 

Add group

Select particles by dragging a rectangle around the region of interest of an active emitter. Then, click on this button ("Add group") to store them. New groups appear under “Selection”.

Selection

Here, you can choose a particle group from a drop-down menu.

Rename group

Enter a new name for the selected particle group.

Freeze-Follow

When set to “Yes” the selected particles are frozen:

  • You can stop the simulation at any point, make a selection, and go on with the calculation.
  • Other particles can collide and react with the frozen ones.
  • Frozen particles cannot be released again, even after you have deleted the group.
Total particles | Current particles

These two read-only fields shows the emitter's total number of particles, and the particles in the current group.

Delete group

This button removes a group without deleting its particles.

 Remove particles

This button keeps the group, but deletes the included particles (does not work with “Freeze-Follow” particles).