Particle age problem

[stevesideas]

Not sure if this is vray or 3dsmax but I'm having issues with this when using particle flow. All the particles seem to fade out together rather than over the particle age as they are created. I've used a dynamic material operator within particle flow and instanced the opacity map from the shader to the dynamic slot. Assign material ID is on.

I've tried using a vray shader but I seem to have major issues with alpha when using this. The standard shader seems to work better but I still have this age problem. Any ideas ?

[stevesideas]

Well, I managed to find the issue. I had multiple particle sources linked to a single birth operator hence the age for each source was based only on that event. I've duplicated the birth event and now things seem fine.

[vlado]

All right then, good to know Though I'm curious about the alpha issues you were having - can you explain a bit, if you have time?

Best regards,
Vlado

[stevesideas]

Well, I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I seemed to have issues when using vray sun system with the environment sky. It seemed to produce strange black alpha channels for the facing particles. I'll see if an earlier incremental file setup is setup like this and do a screen grab. It may not have been the material as I've been tinkering around for ages trying to get this project sorted. I had to copy the env sky into the env overide and then make the environment black. I'll get a screenshot together in a bit.

[vlado]

Ah that. Usually increasing the max. transparency levels helps to deal with it.

Best regards,
Vlaod

[stevesideas]

Not had to adjust that parameter before...good to know. I'll give it a go.

Thanks