Hey guys. Hopefully someone here can help. I'm running into this issue where I have an animated texture on two separate objects. It controls the opacity of the object so that one object appears to dissolve and the other object grows. The map works correctly on the first object, showing white at first and disappearing over the course of the animation. The second object should just be a straight up reverse. It looks correct in the viewport, but all that renders is the edge color of the texture.

I've included the file for you guys.

The color ramp is reversed for the second object, but the opacity intensity is using the original value, effectively canceling it out. Instead of reversing the color ramp, simply swap the destination min and max values on the fit range vop, or use a complement vop between your fit range and the opacity intensity, if you don't feel like redoing the ramp. Also, shader may have a few more inputs than you probably need, unless you are going for a strange effect, you probably don't want to connect the color ramp to the opacity color as this will cause the shadows to be tinted the opposite color. The diffuse color input also does not need to be connected to the color ramp, unless you want the reflected color to be the same as the emitted color. It won't make it look much different, but makes it more difficult to separate the effect into various image planes (layers).

That got it. Thanks a bunch and I'll keep the other shader advice in mind as well.