Pflow Opacity with Particle Age Using Arnold Standard

#1

Are we supposed to use the blend material for use with max to Arnold 2018 to get the particle age map to work? If not which materials and maps am I supposed to use?

No matter what I try, I can’t get a particle emission to go transparent over the particle age. I’m using the Delete attribute in Pflow with a static material attribute with the Mixer Material for Arnold. Perhaps that’s wrong? I also tried the max blend material using arnold materials but got the same results. I’m trying to crossfade between two arnold materials. One material is opaque using a black and white ramp in the opacity channel and the other has a black opacity channel with no texture.

Thanks for any hints on this.

#2

I found this. I’ll have to give it a try when I get back to work.

There is one known limitation: If you are using particle age in legacy mode, and the particle age is not directly connected to an Arnold node, this will cause the “max API version” of ParticleAge to run, and that DOES NOT WORK (that was the whole reason we write an explicit particle age shader for arnold in the 1st place!)

But that is

ONLY in ActiveShade
Only when behind another legacy shader

Attaching image of three differently colored screen-space checkerboard maps applied to the colors of a particle age