Material Requires Map Channel 1...Blank Render

I am trying to render a scene which consists of several superspray particle generators. These each have a custom material assigned to them. When I render with Krakatoa, I am getting the error:

“WRN: The Material: _______ requires map channel 1, which is not available”

The result is a completely black render…I am assuming because of this error. I am not sure what to do to correct this so my particle system can be rendered.

I found a response that seems to address the issue,

But I am finding it very confusing…can anyone explain this better?

Thanks so much.

3ds Max expects that a texture map in a material set to use Explicit Mapping Coordinates (e.g. Mapping Channel 1) will find UV data in the underlying object.
For example, if you make a Teapot and assign a Material with a Bitmap Texture to it, the Generate Mapping Coords checkbox of the Teapot must be checked for the map to render.

In the case of Particle Flow, each particle (point in space) can provide a mapping coordinate value in any of the 100 mapping channels, and Krakatoa can use that to determine which texel of the texture map to display on that particle.

But the SuperSpray does not always generate mapping coordinates per particle. There is an option in “Mat’l Mapping and Source”, but it is not very easy to control, and doesn’t work very well with Krakatoa (but at least you won’t get the error message). In my tests, all I could get was the color of the bottom left texel of the map to show up, which does not help very much.

So what are your options?
*You can stop using outdated particle systems :wink: and recreate the look of the SuperSpray in Particle Flow where you can assign mapping coordinates to particles.
*You can remove the texture map and use a solid color to avoid the error.
*You can switch it to procedural mapping (Planar from Object or World XYZ), or use a procedural 3D map which defaults to that mode anyway.

Please let me know if you need more info…

Thanks Bobo!