Cineversity

Hi , I was wondering, what am I doing wrong!!!....  I have an animated gradient (3D spherical) in the luminance channel of a shader, I am trying to have this animation be the driver of a particle system (x-particles), but in order for that to happen I need to bake the shader on to the geometry, somebody told me that generate UV coordinates would do the trick, but my particle system won’t seem to be respecting it, please help!!

I am attaching the scene JIC.
Thanks !

Hi zimmstudioz,

I have send you an upload link, (Cineversity Private Message) for your scene.

In short, you need to add a “Bake Texture” Tag to the object that has the Shader applied.
https://help.maxon.net/#TBAKETEXTURE-ID_BAKEOPTIONS

I had for a short time X-Particles, but any request to have a license for me to use here was not successful. So, I have no idea if the following will work:
Since baking a texture to an animation might create a larger file, I would suggest to just create a gradient in Photoshop and animate the position.

All the best

Hi zimmstudioz,

Thanks for the file, I got it an hour ago.

Please check your Private Message, to find two copies of your scene.

Edit: I hope you got these files, as I have replaced them with a larger file and all baked, it is larger. Old; The first one is a simple UV projection while a few parts are moved to provide a better use of the texture. New just one file done with the Wizard /edit

The second file is a polygon reduced version, as the object has a lot of subdivision, perhaps on purpose.
However, it was much faster to get a efficient UV map from it. I have baked a frame for that and loaded it in a new material.

The gradient you have set up is a 3D gradient, and the original UV was layered on top of each other. In that way the baking had conflicting information and the result wasn’t useable.

I hope one or the other will be useful.

All the best

P.S. I have made a little one minute clip:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/iz0j2VVL4eSW6Exu1r4ZwQqp66RLgxzliNVDH4evRCG?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

Or check this, the easiest would be Optimal Mapping, but be always aware, that will change your UV tag information. In your case, both options will work -Cubic, Angle
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/n6TIH7ZOKe2l1oGC2c7DeUNeFrFblZ99R99WHyhZrmg?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy