Particle shader and reading color info from .prt file

[japetus]

Hopefully I'm just doing something silly, but I'm trying to decrease the load time on some particles by exporting to .prt. Then i'm trying to use the Phoenix Particle Shader to shade the particles how they should be before they were exported from Tyflow. It seems like the color info is coming through as I can see it in the viewport, I cannot seem to get the PhoenixParticleTexture map to read them at all, no matter what I do it turns out default white, from the constant color. I"ve attached my very simple setup. I'm on Vray6 Hotfix 2 and Phoenix 5.01.01 in Max 2023.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, you gotta enable the Color From Particle Channel option and pick the color channel.

[japetus]

Yeah that is one of the first things I tried, but I dont get that channel showing up. as you can see its in the .prt file ..

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Could you please attach one of these PRT files so I can check what happens?

[japetus]

Sure thing...thanks as always! Zipped max and .prt file

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, okay, you can do something else - for a few versions now, the Phoenix Simulator can also load PRT files. This way you have much more control over the preview and can also use the Input rollout Time Bend controls to retime the particles.

Once you do that, the Particle Texture would recognize the color channel and will allow you to pick it. You need to also remove the PRT reader from the Particle Shader and pick the Simulator's PRT particle system.

However, there is an even easier way - you don't need the particle texture at all. If you are using Phoenix 5, you could just tell the Particle Shader to read the color of the particles using the "Color From Particle Channel" option:

[japetus]

That worked! Thanks, I didn't even think to try to load it through the Phoenix grid. It seems odd that I'm not able to do it through the PRT Reader itself however...seems like that needs a little bit of development or something...but I guess you're right that this way I have more options on how to use the particles.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

The PRT reader is old and tired Last year I noticed it would be much easier to make it possible to load prts into the simulator, than to add all the missing previews, info boxes and time bend controls to the prt reader... I am having some plans for the future of the prt reader, I hope I will be able to find time...

[japetus]

Ah, good to know! Hope that you can! Glad to know the proper way to do it now.