ICE Sprite Compound

 
 
 

Category: Particle

The ICE Sprite compound is designed to render a sprite on ICE particles. You can use any textured image file or animated image sequence as the sprite and apply it to the point cloud. The sprite image's projection is applied to each of the particles based on its default UV coordinates.

The ICE Sprite compound uses the particle's Age attribute to control which image in the animated sequence is displayed based on the percentage of the particle's life span that you've set in the point cloud's ICE tree using the AgeLimit attribute.

Remember that you must set the particle's AgeLimit attribute in the point cloud's ICE tree for this shader compound to work - see Limiting the Particle's Age for more information.

For general information about ICE particle shaders, see ICE Particle Shading.

Parameters

Name

The compound's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.

Input

Plug an Image shader into the Input port of the ICE Sprite compound, then select the image to use as the sprite.

Smoke/Bubble Texture

Click either of these buttons to plug in an Image shader with a Smoke or Bubble texture already selected for the sprite. You can easily change the image in the texture node.

Sequence Texture

Click this button to plug in an Image Shader with a default animated sequence texture already selected for the sprite. You can easily change the animated sequence texture used.

Use Particle Alpha

Controls whether the particle's alpha value is used (on) or whether the alpha from the sprite's image is used (off).

Particle Alpha from Age

If you selected the Use Particle Alpha option, you can use this profile curve to shape how the particle's alpha value is used in the sprite over the particle's age.

Render Tree Usage

Plug this compound's Surface output into the Surface port of the point cloud's Material node. Use the preset buttons inside the compound to quickly plug an Image shader and a Texture node into this shader, or you can plug these nodes in manually.