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CINEMA 4D R11 Quickstart – Dynamics
Welcome To Thinking Particles (Optional module)
This is the Quickstart Tutorial for Thinking Particles. It will give you a quick, and hopefully fun, introduction to
this extensive particle system.
1. Introduction
Thinking Particles is a particle system. A particle system is used in the 3D world when a large amount of objects
will be colliding such as a flock of birds, a bacterial invasion or (especially in conjunction with PyroCluster)
fire and smoke effects. Let’s say you have to animate a tornado sweeping through a desert. You would need
to animate millions of tiny grains of sand flying through the air. If you had to do this manually you couldn’t
complain about job security because it would take you the rest of your life to do. Since you have other and
more important things to do before you meet your maker we give you Thinking Particles. Maybe you are already
familiar with CINEMA 4D’s particle system which, in itself, lets you create amazing effects. Thinking Particles
makes these possibilities endless.
Thinking Particles operates node-based. You can picture a node as a little machine which receives data at one
end, processes it and outputs this processed data at the other end or transfers it to other nodes. If you are
familiar with CINEMA 4D’s expressions editor XPresso you will also have some experience with nodes. (If you
have not yet worked with XPresso it would be a good idea to take a look at CINEMA 4D’s XPresso Quickstart
Tutorial since Thinking Particles requires some of the basic knowledge you will acquire there). Several elements
of Thinking Particles are nodes – with the exception of the particle geometry object which we will examine in
detail later. Thinking Particles uses an emitter node, not an emitter object as does the standard particle system.
You construct your particle system like you do your XPresso setup and will have a comprehensive pool of nodes
from which to choose, one of which is XPresso itself.