Would have responded sooner but have been out of town. The following is some particle object shader tips and tricks from Antoine Clappier. The Bonfire issue is addressed in item "D". Pretty cool stuff. Mark Dear Dreamers, It is definitely possible (and easy!) to shade particles in Carrara. Each particle is seen by Carrara as an objects and therefore can have any kind of shader applied (but you can not apply a different shader to each particle). How to apply a shader to a particle system: 1- Drag and Drop a Particle Object in the scene 2- Modify the settings to get the Particle effect you want 3- While your Particle Object is selected, go to the shader Room 4- Edit the shader as usual As you can see there is no difference between an Object and a Particle Object in Carrara. Here is a few tricks, I have found: A)- Put a picture on your particles: say you want to create leaves: 1- Do the previous steps 2- In the shader: open the picture of a leaf in the Color Channel. 3- You are done ! Carrara will apply the picture to each particle not to the global object. It is good to know that each particle has its own little UV space. B)- Change the shape of particles You are not satisfied with the offered particle shapes. No problem do your own particle shape ! 1- Create your particle object as previously explained 2- Set the shape of the particles to Rectangle 3- In the Texture Room, create a Multi Channel Mixer, in Source 1 put the shader you want, in Source 2 set all Channel to zero except Transparency that should be at 100%, in the Blender put the shape of the particle (other texture, image, ...). This technic refers to the extented tutorial that I have posted on the list about "Boolean Textures" or Alpha Channel VS Transparency. The good news is that I have included in Carrara 1.0 an example of this technic. Go to the Browser Tray (left of the screen), select Shaders, scroll: in the Complex Procedurals section, you will find a Boolean Shader. The Boolean Shader shows how to create holes in objects, ie to change the shape of an object (or a particle in this example). The thing to understand it that the Source 1 shader is the actual shader of the object, Source 2 shader is the "hole" shader (or transparent shader) and the Blender is where you define the shape. Let say you want to create yellow star shape particles: in Source 1, set color to yellow, leaves Source 2 as is (in fact Source 2 should never be modified unless you want to create complex special effects) and put in the mixer a grey levels image of a star (created in a bitmap software). C)Add motion blur to particles: Very cool effect that can add a better speed feeling to your particles. 1- Create whatever particle object with a the texture of your choice. 2- Create a Grey level image with a black to white gradient (the gradient does not need to be linear: be creative !) 3- Edit the shader of the Particle Object, in Transparency Channel load the previously created gradient. Rotate if needed the image. D) Multiple shaders on Particle Object: Impossible ? Nothing is impossible in Carrara ! ;-) Let say you want a more complex animation of leaves with different leaf shapes and colors. 1- Create a first Particle Object, apply previously explained shading technics. 2- Reduce the number of Particles 3- Duplicate the Particle Object, very slighly modify its settings. 4- Modify shading of the new Particle Object 5- Repeat step 3 to 4 several times. You get a complex particle animation with various shapes and textures. C) Very usefull trick: There is one tricky problem when shading particle: at the beginning of the animation most of the time you don't see your particles. So when you try to edit the shader you work blindly. A solution is to change the time but when you modify the shader you create a bunch of keyframes and end up with an animated shader (something you may not want). The trick is to stay at time equal zero, then go to the Texture Room and switch the preview window to Flat Preview. This preview mode is similar to one particle seen from the front. D) The Mysterious Particle Shader ! If you go in the Texture Room, in the Channel Menu of any shader, you will find the Mysterious shader under: "Natural Functions>Particle Shader". This shader is extremely useful, its value is equal to the "life" of a particle, ie zero when the particle is born and one when the particle die (and a linear value between this two points). By itself this function seems to be utterly uninteresting but if you apply this shader to a Blender things get very interesting instead ! By using the Particle Shader you have the possibility to "retrieve" the life information of each single particle (which is different) and modify the shader accordingly. A very simple example: say you want to create the sparks you see flying away from a wood fire. Usually these sparks start with a bright yellow and end with dark red. In Carrara, simply create the Particle Object, edit the shader: set color to black, put a mixer in the Glow Channel with Color 1 set to Yellow, Color 2 to Dark Red, and in the Blender the Particle Shader. Each particle will go independently from yellow to red. As this email gets too long, I will stop here! I hope this few tips and tricks on Carrara's particles will help you. By combining these basic technics you can already create very intersting effects. The next step is to combine the particles with outside effects such as volumic primitives, Aura effet, ... but that is another story. Happy rendering to all, Antoine Clappier