Dynamic paint does not work on canvas in paint mode EDIT!.. Ok my problem is now very small as i appear to have figured everything else out so far. 

I dont seem to be able to use any object as a dynamic brush on any other object setup as a canvas. I can use the wave mode just fine... but paint seems to be completely unaffected. I can even use particles a brushes in wave mode.. but i just wont respond to color change. 

Any ideas??

OLD,,,,,,,
Im pretty new to the particle system in blender and I am attempting to follow at tutorial on using particles as dynamic paint.

I have two issues.. the first is that my particles show simply in the viewer but never appear in the render. 

the second is that I have confirmed the particle settings and the dynamic paint settings (brush and canvas) several times..

The particles are to move from left to right across a text object which has been converted to a mesh. Gravity is set to zero and the text as the emitter. The particles behave as expected and travel for 65 frames from left to right... but they do not affect the object nor do they paint it as a canvas.

Any pointers would be fantastic guys!

EDIT: I setup a whole new simple scene with a plane sub div to 100 and a UV sphere above emitting the standard amount of particles. If I use the particles as the brush i can treat the plane (canvas) as a wave.. however.. when I switch the mode to paint nothing is happening. I also can NOT see the particles during a render at any time. Please help guys!
I had this same problem, then stumbled on the solution after watching ~10 tutorial videos.
Solution: The &quot;+&quot; button needs to be pressed, next to &quot;Paintmap Layer&quot; item, under &quot;Physics &gt; Dynamic Paint &gt; Output&quot; menu.
Before:

After:

Also make sure that you have an &quot;Attribute&quot; node feeding into &quot;Base Color&quot; in the Shader node tree for your canvas object, with the name of the the &quot;Paintmap Layer&quot;, like so: