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Emitters window

Emitters window

The Emitters window lists every emitter in the effect you are editing. Each row is one emitter, with the controls you use most often — enable/disable, visibility, and rename — right on the row.

Toolbar

The panel's buttons sit in its title bar, to the right of the tab. There are two of them:

  • Add new emitter — appends a new emitter to the effect.
  • Add folder — creates a folder. Folders are purely for organizing the list; they do not affect how the effect simulates or exports.

Particle counters

The last row of the list is a summary: two blue particle counters for the whole effect. The total is aligned with the per-emitter live counts above it, so the list reads like a table with its sum at the bottom. The counters read like this:

95 / max. 100
  • The first number is the total particle count across all emitters in the current preview frame — how many particles the effect is using right now.
  • The number after max. is the highest total reached over the simulated timeline so far.

Both numbers are compacted for readability once they get large: 1.5K means 1 500 particles, 2M means two million.

The counters stay hidden until the preview has actually simulated something, so a freshly opened effect shows no numbers rather than a misleading 0. Once the timeline has simulated, the counters appear even if the effect currently holds no particles — 0 / max. 0 means "simulated, and nothing is alive", which is different from showing nothing at all.

What the maximum measures

The maximum is taken over every simulated frame, not only the moments the display happens to refresh. A brief spike is therefore never missed, and the number matches the peak of the population curve in the Timeline preview.

The maximum is not permanent:

  • Restarting the preview clears the simulated history, so the maximum resets and starts building up again.
  • Editing the effect can invalidate part of the timeline history and force a re-simulation. The maximum is then recalculated from what remains, so it can go down — for example if the peak happened in the part of the timeline that was just invalidated.

Reading the counters together

The current total always matches the sum of the live counts shown on the individual emitter rows (see below), so you can use the summary row as the effect-wide figure and the row numbers to see which emitter contributes what.

Row indicators

Each emitter row shows two numbers on its right side:

  • A blue live count — how many particles this emitter has in the current preview frame. Like the summary counters, it appears only once the preview has simulated. It is shown as N /, immediately before the capacity badge.
  • A grey capacity badge — the emitter's particle capacity, that is its maximum number of particles as configured in the emitter's properties. This is a limit you set, not a measurement: it does not change while the preview runs.

For an emitter attached to another emitter, the capacity badge also shows the fan-out, for example 500 × 3 = 1.5K — capacity per instance, number of instances, and the resulting total.

Comparing the blue live count against the grey capacity tells you how close an emitter is to its limit. An effect that constantly runs at capacity is usually a sign the capacity should be raised, or that particles are living longer than intended.