Hello everyone! I have just begun to use Carrara 2, thanks to my Digital Imaging class. I litterally just began useing it, like a day or two ago. Through my random screwing around in the program i found the particle emitter. I found this to be escpecially interesting and was messing around with it, but when i went to render the colors shown on the previews and what have you were not there. The particles were just grey squares. I asked my teacher if this was a mistake of mine, perhaps missed somthing, and he replied that it was an inherent problem with Carrara. When i got home, i downloaded the Carrara 3 Demo and once more began to dicker around in the program, and i found the same problem with Carrara 3 and no colored particles. I can put shaders on them and stuff, but this isnt achieveing the desired affect as much as i would have hoped. I am reaching out to all those with greater knowlage than i. Is this an inherent problem? If so, why wouldnt it be fixed in 3? Thank you for your time!

Attached Link: http://www.vizualds.com

Um your teacher doesn't know what he is talking about:) Just kidding. What issues are you having with applying a shader on to them? The colors you see in the preview are colors showing the life and death of the particles, so you can see the timespan of the particles life. The attached image use particles for the smoke/etc. Let us know what problems you are having with shading the particles. By the way if you want to you can download the attached images scene file, just go to the link, and signup its in the downloads section, but you have to signup first. Brian brian@vizualds.com http://www.vizualds.com

Yeah your teacher did not know a thing about Carrara. You need to put some colors in it in model room. Play around in there a bit. And then you can drag the time frame to later time and go back to model room and change the color. It will change the color from start to end.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=197616

Here's a post on shading particles, scroll down a bit to find all you'll need to know.

Oh, wow. That post really is amazing! Thanks everybody for your assistance! I thought i looked around the forum, but i never saw that post, sorry. But thank you for your help!