Materials and Emitters

RealFlow | Cinema 4D offers two emitters with material support to control particle emission:

  • Only pure white pixel will be able contribute, grey shades are not considered!
  • Animated shaders or bitmaps are not supported at the moment.

Image

The "Image" emitter consists of a scaleable plane acting as the emission area. The actual particle creation is controlled through a material, but be aware that only pure white pixel will be able contribute, grey shades are not considered!

  • Create a material or open an existing one.
  • Add a shader or an image to an arbitrary channel ("Color", "Diffusion", etc.).
  • Drag the shader/image to the emitter's "Texture" field. For updates on the shader/bitmap, reattach the material.

 

Object

If you want to use images for emitting particles from objects choose the "Object" emitter. Parametric objects have to be made editable, because this emitter requires proper UVW coordinates.

  • Create a material or open an existing one.
  • Add a shader or an image to an arbitrary channel ("Color", "Diffusion", etc.).
  • Drag the shader/image to the emitter's "Texture" field. For updates on the shader/bitmap, reattach the material.
  • Texture-based emission only works with "Emission Type" set to "Faces".