The plugin offers a wide variety of options to visualize the particles in Cinema 4D's viewport and they are centralized here. By default, most of the options are inactive and greyed out. But you can, for example, paint the particles' channels and attributes to the viewport representation. This way it is possible to preview how the particles will be rendered when the “RF Particle Material” is used. To use this feature, go to the “Render” panel and click on “Add Shader”. More information about this shader can be found here.
Display mode
There are four methods to visualize the particle cloud in Cinema 4D.
The first one, “TP View Type”, does not provide any options at all. The particles are drawn as small white crosses, and all display-related settings are changed via the “Thinking Particles Settings...” dialogue. Please [ click here ] for further instructions about how to use the various options.
With “Particles” you will have access to the particles' channels, e.g. velocity or the number of neighbours. An attribute's range can also be made visible by defining a colour gradient. The particles are displayed as white dots, unless a channel has been selected. The size of the dots is fixed.
“Circles” is a very nice mode, because it gives you a better idea of the particle cloud's volume and dimensions – in particular when the number of (displayed) particles is very low. With this type you also have access to several options to control the circles' colours and size.
“Box” draws a bounding box around the particle cloud and the individual particles are no longer visible. This is a very fast way of displaying a fluid's dimensions. This mode does not provide any other options.
Circle Direction
This drop-down menu is only available with “Display mode” set to “Circles”, and defines the orientation of the circles representing the particles. You can choose from “Camera”, “XY”, “XZ”, and “XZ”.
Circle Radius
To adjust the circles representing the particles, enter a new value here.
Color By
This feature cannot be used with “Display mode” set to “TP View Type”, because in this case, the colour is adjusted via the “Thinking Particles Settings” dialogue. Here you can choose which channel you want to visualize using the minimum and maximum value of the active property. The mode of operation is exactly the same as with RealFlow's “Display” panel under an emitter/domain's “Node Params”:
You choose which channel you want to see, e.g. velocity, and then you define colours to make the velocity distribution visible. With SPH particles you can choose from a long list of channels, while Hybrido and HySPH work with a reduced set of channels.
Color
The gradient you can see here is used to define the particles' individual colours based on the values of the currently selected channel. The left limit of the gradient represents the lowest value; the right limit indicates the highest value. You can add as many control points to the gradient as you want.
Automatic Range
By default, the minimum and maximum values are calculated by the plugin automatically. The values are displayed in the “Current Min/Max” fields, and the colour range is adjusted to this range.
But, in many cases the viewport representation lacks contrast and it is difficult to see differences between the values/colours. In this case you can deactivate “Automatic Range”, and adjust “Min/Max Value” to enhance contrast.
Min Value/Max Value
Here you can adjust the minimum and maximum range of the chosen channel. The values you enter here change the colour gradient and increase or decrease contrast. This is important if you want to enhance the differences between the values. Please bear in mind that your settings do not only influence the viewport representation, but also the results of your render with the “Particle Shader” feature. Please check also the “How to... Activate and Render Channels?” page for a short workflow description.
Current Min/Current Max
These two parameters are read-only fields and show you the minimum and maximum values of the chosen channel. Since these values change over time, they are updated automatically when you scrub the timeline. You can use them as a reference when you adjust “Min/Max Value”.