hey there,
so I'm playing around with POPs, and just want to get some basic stuff sorted in my head. The help docs are surprisingly thin on basic info, I've hunted thru them but just get simplistic one-liners, so….

Using the create particles shelf, and looking at the result of the standard fireworks button, here's a few basic questions I'd love to get answers to:

(1) why is gravity not affecting the starburst particles? A gravity operator is in the pop network…. I thought that force nodes could be placed anywhere in the network and affect all the particles, but evidently they only affect the particle stream feeding in, not any created further downstream in the network. Is this generally the rule? It makes sense to me, but seems to be counter to what I saw in some tutorial somewhere.

(2) The network ends with a collect node, which I guess is there so you can add more nodes in a simple way, if you want to customize things. But, why bother connecting the color_dead (color) node to the final collector node? I disconnect this and all still works the same. So why's it here?

(3) In the final collect (“collect2”) node, if you switch the order of the input node, you get an error and the operator info indicates you've got an invalid source. Why does it matter what the order is when you collect particle streams?

cheers,
Mark