Trying to follow the “Particle fun” tutorial I used the Classic shader for particles as replacement of the Mantra Surface.

The rendering result is odd, with no points and instead some big spheres.





Confused if I need to use a different shader - using Principled Shader didn't change anything - or something else.

On the actual top level node there is a Render tab. Inside that tab there is Geometry tab. Inside that tab set it to not render unconnected points as spheres. By default Mantra assumes you want to see unconnected points as spheres.

You have to set the size, ‘point scale’ on the object and/or pscale attribute for per-point scale. The default scale is an arbitrary size, which could either be way too big or way too small depending on distance to camera.

Using your suggestions I did find indeed source_particles>Render>Geometry>Render As Points property.

Setting as No Point Rendering didn't produce any output. Setting as Render Only Points you can change the point size using the Point Scale and achieve nice results.

I too have the same issue..

No matter how much i decrease the size of particles its still displaying the big sphere

Please don't ever adjust the point scale on this level, as far as I'm concerned it should be removed
from Houdini altogether. Do it inside SOPs with a wrangle. Setting it at this level means if you
export these particles, they WILL NOT inherit the value you set at OBJ level. It is shit.

tinyhawkus
Please don't ever adjust the point scale on this level, as far as I'm concerned it should be removed
from Houdini altogether. Do it inside SOPs with a wrangle. Setting it at this level means if you
export these particles, they WILL NOT inherit the value you set at OBJ level. It is shit.

It's there to be able to adjust the scale even if your particle cache is loaded as packed disk without the need to write it all to ifd or recache again
so it has its uses