Hey nothing urgent, just a bit baffled why (in the mat context)
the PointCloudOpen node wont take “$F” in the file channel
as in former times

I´m a bit out of touch - is there a new wf?
Or is it just me messing up something?

Glad if someone can point me …
Huge Thanks in advance!

You can't have animated VEX code. Only parameter values going into the shader can contain animation.

Make sure the entire shader network is contained within a material builder node, and then promote the filename with a parameter.

also make sure to not have any external connections to the material builder if it contains time dependent parameters otherwise the automatic wrapper shader will hardcode their values at the first frame, which to me seems like unfinished design of MAT context

Ok, got it - that´s why it worked with the explicit frame number
and threw a “Can´t have channels which depend on time” warning,
when I tried promoting with $F in it.

Geez, how embarassing, wasn´t even aware the MAT context allowed for
containing a shader network similar to SHOP.
(Skipped the Masterclasses etc. for quite a while,
but that can easily be cured )

Guess I´m on track now. Thank you very much for the insights!

Have a good time

gap closed, thanks again!
Anyone missed this like me,
just box-select the lot + rightClick …