Particle emitter mystery

Roygee

Hi all :)

I've been trying to make some smoke which fades from black to light grey over time. Done Mark Bremmers tut, but no can do.

Done some digging and used the big bonfire preset. This has a simple gradient for colour and uses the particle age as the shader and works - except on camera facing, sphere, metaball and objects.

Camera facing is the only one I've found that gives good smoke effects, although rectangle using a sprite with an alpha map isn't too bad.

If this is something that is broken in C8.1, as I seem to recall reading, I can stop beating myself up and look for other solutions. If it is broken, has it been fixed in C8.5?

Using Win7 64bit.

Anyone up to helping me solve this mystery?

tbwoq

Hi Roygee.

I'm using C8.1 Pro 64 bit. All the particle shapes work with a color gradient and a particle age shader except using the shape 'Objects'. Maybe someone with C8.5 can test. If object particle shapes are supposed to work with particle shader's, it would be a very powerful feature. If I uncheck 'Use object shader' in the editor with an Object shape and render, I have had to force quit Carrara(bug?).

Roygee

Thanks, tbwoq - got it! :)

I was putting the "age" in the wrong channel :(

Tried with a primitive cube as a shape - doesn't crash, but the colour doesn't change.

tbwoq

Color gradient doesn't change for me either using particle shape objects. The crash is only when I try to render with 'Use object shader' unchecked. Tried reference shaders and mixers(etc.) but object shapes don't seem to work with particle shader functions. If they did, I'm guessing you could use something like volumetric clouds for smoke. Feature request. :)