PM - Particle Channels

“Channels” are fluid properties that can be used for vertex mapping and shading inside your 3D application. The “Particle Mesh” engine provides a wide variety of channels and you can activate or deactivate them according to your needs. Please note that you need a compliant render engine to make use of the channels. Not every available renderer supports this information. The easiest way is to render with the RealFlow RenderKit, because it has interfaces to Next Limit's Maxwell Render, and most of the commonly used engines (Vray, mentalray, Mantra, Renderman etc.).

In combination with Maxwell Render the attributes are not platform-specific and can be used with all major 3D programs. Some attributes can look very similar, for example “Force” and “Pressure”, but this strongly depends on the mesh’s particle source(s). Other values, like “Age” might also create a uniform colour distribution, for example when the emitter’s “Volume” mode is on.

Some file formats, for example MD, offer the possibility of selecting which channels you want to change with the mesh.