Introduction to the CS Effects User Interface

The interface for creating smoke and fire effects is broken up into three parts:

1. USE - Choose an effect from the Effect Library to instantly apply to the effect in your movie.
2. EDIT - Edit any of more than 40 parameters of the effect to achieve exactly the look you want.
3. SHARE - Share the effects you make with other CommandSim customers.

These Help pages will describe each of the parts in detail.

When you drag and drop a CS Effects item from the Components panel to the Stage, you will see a circle with red wavy lines inside it. That is the CS Effects token. You change its behavior first by selecting it (a blue line surrounding the token indicates that is selected):

and then opening the Components Inspector Panel. The Components Inspector Panel will look like the following:

If the window opens too small or too large, you can put your cursor on one of the corners, click and drag to make the window smaller or larger. The interface will size to fit the window size you specify.

Preview Area

On the left of the interface is the preview window. This shows you a static snapshot of the effect. You can see how the effect looks over time by pressing and holding the PREVIEW button, located at the bottom. If you want to see how your overall movie looks at any time, you can press the TEST MOVIE button. This is equivalent to testing the movie via Control > Test Movie menu item.

The red arrow in the preview area is a way to change the orientation of the plume. You click and drag it in a circular motion to specify at which angle the plume should be released.

Main Interaction Area

On the right-hand side of the interface, you can select the effect you want or modify it. You move to the various sections by clicking on the tabs on top: USE, EDIT, or SHARE. The next sections describe each of these pages in detail.