[Brian Jones]

probably go to Preferences/Import/Export/Wavefront Import and change the scale to something bigger

[Brian Jones]

There is a Distort effect in the Layer of the Color and Bump channels. Either disable it or set the Time Scale to 0.

[Brian Jones]

check out the cinebench 9.6 results here

https://www.3dfluff.com/mash/cinebench/top.php

[Brian Jones]

one possibility
TP presets
-Volume emitter (shot for 1 frame unless you want multiplying dust specs)
-Wind of some sort with low speed and fairly high Turbulence.

[Brian Jones]

Spline or Point Node in xPresso but it sounds like you could do it with the Align to Spline tag easier

[Brian Jones]

here you are

https://homepage.mac.com/bdjones/.Public/ClampTroubles.zip

[Brian Jones]

add a new node for the sphere, from it connect the sphere’s y position into the clamp node’s Value port, everything else sounds like it’s ok (except the constant nodes are not strictly necessary, the 0 and 146 can be set in the Clamp node directly rather than being fed in – but that doesn’t hurt anything)

[Brian Jones]

oh yeah… it’s been a while since I used the non-built-in bhodinuts…

[Brian Jones]

maybe a picture… (I don’t have 9.1 so I can’t post a file that would be useful to you)

https://homepage.mac.com/bdjones/.Public/MixTextures.png

[Brian Jones]

are you rendering or only looking in the interface? If you *are* rendering you probably have not checked off mix textures on the second material tag or something simple, it’s easy to do. Check the manual Mixing Textures in the Material Manager chapter.