When a particle sim in an AutoDopNetwork uses sprites (using the "popsprite1" node) I am able to see the sprites in the scene view but when I render the scene in Mantra, the sprites just appear as points. It seems the sprites used to render by default in an earlier version. What am I doing wrong ?

I didn't see an answer to my question, but I figured it out. So I will post the solution here in case anyone else runs into this.


There are a few manual steps you need to do:

1) Under the "Material Palette" in the material browser under "Sprite" select "Sprite Fog" and drag the icon into the window the the immediate right of the browser (it will say "/mat" in the bar above it.).

2) Go back to your network view (the node graph) and select "source" particles at the top level.

3) There is a rendering tab in the attribute editor for source particles. Select the "Render" tab and see that the first field is the "Material' field.

4) Next to the material field on the far with is an icon that allows you to choose and operator. Choose the "Spritefog" that you just added to the Material Palette in step 1.

5) The sprites should appear in your final render using Mantra (you can do a quick check in the "Render View". (accessible through tab above your main 3D scene view.

I don't recall having to do this in previous releases so not sure why the particles don't get rendered in Mantra by default, but assigning the material directly seems to work.