I’m using a certain object for particles to come off of. I’ve been using the particles menu trying to get it to where when the particles die and new generations spawn, they’re a different material. But for some reason whenever I do a test render, it renders all the particles in whatever material the main object is set to.
Anyone know how to get around this problem?
do you mean that you want the new particles to change color over time, for example, the first ones come out red, and then after a second or so they come out blue?
In the Particles tab under Children, in the Generation field, select Generation 0 and at bottom-right select the Mat(erial) that will be linked to first spawning. In the Links and Pipeline the Materials are numbered as they appear in the popup menu from the closest to the “Add New” option ( so Add New, then Mat 1, Mat 2 etc).
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That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, and it’s not been working.
Edit: To Roger, they’re halo particles and I’m trying to make them bigger, more transparent, and basically less defined as they get farther from the jet they come out of. At first they need to be smaller cause the start of the con-trail is meant to be smaller and denser. But when small particles get spread-out, it becomes visually evident that they’re particles.
I wouldn’t use Generations for that, and here’s why: when a new Gen is spawned it’s direction isn’t relative to the face-normal like the first generation’s; it travells in the same direction but ‘explodes’ at the given frame like pyrotechnics. To overcome that lateral displacement you’d have to place a fairly heavy Force on it which would blow your settings for the first generation. But, if you want to leave a smoke trail or something similar, maybe that’s the way to go.
I would use a simple particle emitter and put IPO Curves on the HaloSize (Material IPO’s) and on Alpha. If you want to sort out your Material problem please load the .blend and I’ll look at it.
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You had only Material.004 linked to the Particle Emitter (1 Mat 1), I linked Material.003 so now it shows 2 Mat 2. I turned off the texture and changed the colors of the Halo materials so they’re easier to see. I scaled the whole ship bigger since yours was so small that the first gen (Gen 0) was shooting way too far. You may want to scale it even bigger since your ship is little bigger than a cube, makes it difficult to use particle life and force settings. I changed a lot of other stuff like Keys and such but you should still be able to suss what to do with the materials and generations.
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/111/spaceship_flight_test_3.blend
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could he also use a colorramp to get a smooth transition through like three colors: red, then orange, then gray?
Well, looks like I’ve pretty much fixed the problem. 
Only partially with the advce of Fligh though. You were still misunderstandign my problem. I might just upload the clip and post a link to it here when it’s done rendering.