So I've been trying to get a simple scene with particle sprites to render.
I have particles with different sprite numbers so they are attached to different png files.
This all works in the viewport, but when I render with arnold all the particles just pick the same file.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by Stephen.Blair. Go to Solution.
Solved by Stephen.Blair. Go to Solution.
Hi @Anonymous
Thanks for posting! Want shaders are you using to assign the pngs? You'll want to use aiStandard shaders for the most reliable outcome.
Also, have you checked out Solid Angle's documentation pages? Theyre loaded with good information on whats supported and not supported within rendering workflows: Particles - Arnold 5 User Guide
Thanks again for being a part of our community!
Jordan Giboney
Technical Solutions Engineer | Media & Entertainment
Installation & Licensing forums | Contact product support | Autodesk AREA
Hi Jordan,
thanks for the response.
I did try using the AiStandardSurface, but then it picks just one file even in the viewport.
When I use a lambert as the maya documentation suggests everything looks fine in the viewport, but in the arnold render it just does one file again. Besides that I noticed that the sprite twist doesn't work either with arnold.
The arnold documentation doesn't say anything about sprites.
Regards.
If you could have string PP attributes, this would be trivial to do with the <attr> token. But unfortunately PP attributes must be float or vector.
You can still use spriteNumPP though, just not directly in the texture file name.
That's ok if you have a small number of textures.
Hi Stephen,
thanks for this.
The setup works as far as I can switch between the images with the switch and the default value on the UserDataFloat.
But it doesn't pick the file from the spriteNumPP.
Typing spriteNumPP or (nparticlename).spriteNumPP in the attribute box doesn't seem to do anything.
Could you be a bit more specific on how to hook this up.
Also would you know a way to fix the sprite twist that doesn't seem compatible with arnold as well.
Regards.
This adds the per particle spriteNumPP attribute to the particle shape node. The spriteNumPP attribute works like Sprite Num, but you can set spriteNumPP on a per particle basis.
nParticleShape1.spriteNumPP = trunc( rand( 3 ) )
In the Attribute Editor for the nParticles node, scroll down to the Arnold section.
Enter spriteNumPP in the Export Attributes box
Hi!
@Anonymous
Yes, "Smoke" does not solve it.
I mentioned this for @jordan.giboney (or other people from Autodesk) to be able to reproduce the problem easily.
Sorry, if my wording was not clear.
@Anonymous wrote:
Also would you know a way to fix the sprite twist that doesn't seem compatible with arnold as well.
This works great,
thanks a lot.
I actually did the expression on spriteTwistPP and then made the rotation attribute and linked it on creation and runtime with:
spriteTwistPP = rotation;
That way what you see in the viewport is what you get in the render.
This works fine, very useful, thank you yet I would like to go a step further by adding the alpha channel pertaining to each image of the sprites. Also I'd need to have the opacityPP driven by the normalized age to make the sprites fade out over time as the particles reach their lifetimePP. Is this possible? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Man I'm having a similar issue as the other guy. I've set mine up as suggested and It will only cycle the images all together instead of Per particle, so on frame one they're all the same image. I've downloaded your file and taken a look and it looks as though mine should work. I've even replaced my nodes with the same utilities you're using. I've tried my usual sprite cycle methods too but they don't seem to transfer properly. maybe later I can upload a simple setup and see if you can tell what the discrepancy is.
maybe there's some funky stuff happening in my file since I started with something that already had some expressions triggered and it's getting hung up. I added file textures to your test file and it works so I might just need to try a clean setup.
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