Items  -  M e t a E f f e c t o r

This is where you make adjustments to how the Effector will affect the items it influences.  What Are MetaEffectors?  MetaEffectors are a general purpose Weight Tool.  By general purpose I mean that they can be used with a variety of different effects and shaders in many different ways. They're kind of like meta balls except that they don't represent geometry, however the fields are created by adding spherical and ellipsoidal effectors that blend together to form the complete field.

Add Effector: Press this to add an Effector sub-tool.  The Effector sub-tool is what actually influences the object.
Realtime Draw:
When this is on you can point-and-click in the World View to add Effectors.


Min: Sets the overall minimum influence for this MetaEffector's sub-tools (Effectors).  Use the checkbox to turn this value on or off.

Max:  Sets the overall maximum influence for this MetaEffector's sub-tools (Effectors).  Use the checkbox to turn this value on or off.

Scale to MinMax: When this is on, the individual settings on each Effector will apply relative to the Min and Max settings you have here..

Add Items To Weight Drawing List: You really need to be able to see the effects of the field you are creating on the geometry it will be used to alter.  You can accomplish this by adding the geometry object to the Weight Drawing List for this MetaEffector.  To do this you must use multi-select.  First select the MetaEffector (or one of it's effector sub-tools), then hold Ctrl (Control) and select each of the geometry items you want to display the weights.  Next click the Add Items To Weight Drawing List button to add them to the list.  Each item will automatically be switched to W (Weight) drawing mode and the field will be displayed on the surface.  White areas indicate a value of 1.0 and black areas indicate a value of 0.0.

Next to each item in the drawing list are two option icons.  The first indicates whether this item will be displayed using this MetaEffector while in Setup mode.  If the box is checked it will, if not it won't.  You can change it by clicking on an empty box to set it as the current field for that object.  The next option determines how the field drawing will be updated on the surface as the Effector moves when not in Setup mode.  The default 's' is static and the field will not change it's display when the Effector is moved.  If the mode is set to 'a' then it is animated, and moving the Effector will change how the field is drawn on the surface.  Setting the mode to 'c' will set it to combo (or "combination") which will update when the Effector is moved, but only in relation to the object's position in Setup mode.  Since the MetaEffector is a general purpose field tool it can't know how it's being used with other effects (and even if it could you might use one MetaEffector several different ways with several different effects), therefore the display of the field on the geometry has to be set for the MetaEffector rather than by any effects, shaders or scripts that use it.

Remove Items: Select an item (or items) in the above list and press this button to remove them from the list.

See also:  Effector block.

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