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CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – PyroCluster
6. Tips & Tricks
There are several methods to optimize your rendering but the most effective method is to increase the
PyroCluster Volume’s “World Step Size“ parameter! Here you will also find several settings for the render mode.
If you click on the drop-down menu you will see “User“ on the list. Selecting “User“ activates the “World Step
Size“ editing parameters. Double click the Pyrocluster Volume Tracer. Set the render mode to “User“. Increase
the “World Step Size“ value to 20. Close the Material Manager and render the scene.
The world step size sets the subtlety of the subdivision in 3D space and searches for PyroCluster Volumes in the
scene. A lower value increases and higher value decreases the time it takes to calculate an image. So what you
have to do is find a value you can live with. Raise the value and watch the result. You can most likely improve
the render time dramatically without compromising quality. It sounds unbelievable but by raising the value you
can decrease the render time by a factor of 100 (or more). In chapter 4 of the PyroCluster manual “Working
with PyroCluster“ you will find a very good solution to finding a value you can live with. Play with the value
and decide for yourself what’s acceptable for you. You can also raise the “Ray Trans. Depth“ value to speed up
your rendering.
Reducing the number of particles is a further method of optimizing render time. We suggest you use fewer
particles and increase the size of the Voxel instead. You will notice that you will get the same result in most
scenes with the exception of scenes which contain fast animation movements or a wide array of particle
systems.
Less light is more! Of course we’re not talking about the actual look of the scene. You can never have enough
light in a scene as long as it’s done correctly. If you can do without multiple lighting of a PyroCluster effect in
your scene, then you should deselect the “PyroCluster Illumination“ and “PyroCluster Shadow Casting“ check
boxes for some or all lights. The more lights included in a PyroCluster effect, the longer the scene will take to
render. Sometimes it can even become unbearably long.
7. In Closing
You saw how fast you can generate impressive effects using PyroCluster and we think it’s time you tested
its limits on your own, just to see what each effect does. You have practically no limits (and no court in the
world can... oops, we already went through that!) If anything about PyroCluster is unclear just flip through the
PyroCluster manual and try everything out.
Just remember that this demonstration is just one of many ways of generating this effect and we adapted it to
the “restrictions“ of this tutorial to make the process understandable easy to understand. Of course you would
go much more into detail if you were generating this effect for a big-screen movie, including doing research
on the behavioral characteristics of steam. Let’s take that coffee you were drinking earlier as an example. Is
it still steaming? Take a good look and try to notice the details of how the steam rises, then simulate it with
PyroCluster. Reality is the best example and a good power of observation is one of the most important factors
in achieving the desired “Hollywood“ effect. Isn’t it scary to know that you can generate anything you imagine
using this module?