Hello, Particles

This is the shortest chapter in the codex. By the end of it, you’ll have made a particle emitter and watched it spit particles into your workspace. No theory yet.

If you haven’t installed the plugin, see Setup → Install and come back here.

What you’ll do

1. Open Roblox Studio. The plugin is on by default once it’s loaded — there’s no toolbar button to flip on. The first signs that it’s running are two small UI elements that appear at the bottom of the viewport: a counter (showing live particle / emitter stats) tucked in the bottom-left, and a hamburger menu (the QMenu, which holds settings, theme, inventory access, and the Insert Module button) tucked in the bottom-right. If you see those two, the plugin is up.

2. Insert one of the eleven Roblox classes the plugin can transform — Part, MeshPart, Beam, Trail, Attachment, PointLight, Model (with a PrimaryPart set), BlurEffect, BloomEffect, ColorCorrectionEffect, Atmosphere, or ImageLabel. For this first walkthrough, insert a Part (Studio’s Model tab → Part) and leave it where it lands. (A MeshPart, a Part with a SpecialMesh child, or a textured-mesh combo also works — nothing in the rest of this walkthrough changes.)

3. Select the part.

   What you see next depends on what you selected:

   • One of the eleven transformable classes (untransformed) → A small Transform UI appears in the top-left of the viewport with the type name and a Transform button. The full property panel doesn’t show yet — there’s nothing to edit until the item is transformed.
   • A native ParticleEmitter or Trail (Roblox’s built-in classes) → The property panel opens immediately. Native PEs and Trails skip the transform step; the plugin edits them in place. (More on that in Native Editing.)
   • An already-transformed item → Same as the native case: panel opens directly.

   You just dropped in a fresh Part, so you’re in the first case. Good — that’s the path this chapter is about.

4. Click the Transform button in the top-left UI.

Your Part appears to vanish. Don’t worry — it’s still there, just hidden. The plugin needed it out of the way.

The property panel + emit section now show up — a column of fields you haven’t seen before. Find the toggle labeled Enabled and switch it on.

Particles begin spilling out of where your Part used to be.

What just happened

You made a particle emitter.

The Part you transformed is now an emitter: a source of particles. Each particle is a short-lived duplicate of your Part — same shape, same colour, same material — born with a size, a speed, and a lifetime. They fly out, age, and disappear.

Try a few things while it’s running:

• Toggle Enabled off. Emission stops; existing particles finish their lifetime and fade.
• Change the Lifetime range. Particles live longer or shorter.
• Open the Color graph (click the swatch) and drag a keypoint to a different colour. The next particles pick up the new colour.

Every change applies live. There’s no “save” button — the plugin reads your edits as you make them.

Two terms you’ve already met

You used both of these without a definition. That’s fine — they were obvious from context. Now we can name them:

• Transform is the verb. It rewires a Roblox instance into a particle emitter. The button you clicked is named after the verb.
• Emit is what the engine does each time a particle is born. An emitter that’s enabled keeps emitting at the Rate you’ve set.

But what did Transform actually do to your Part? Where did your visual go, and where are these particles coming from? Next chapter.