PyroCluster is a plugin for Cinema 4D (C4D) that provides a powerful toolset for creating effects such as realistic clouds, haze, fire and smoke. With PyroCluster you have an almost unlimited number of volume effects. PyroCluster can be used effectively in 3D configurator projects.

What is PyroCluster?

PyroCluster effects are true 3D effects that work with any Cinema 4D compatible particle system. For example, spectacular PyroCluster effects can be combined with the powerful animation features of the optional Thinking Particles. PyroCluster is fully compatible with Thinking Particles.

All effects are based on particles, each particle becomes a puff and is represented as a true volumetric effect. The color of a particle can be determined by its age and a gradient slider. For example, it is easy to produce white smoke at the beginning and oily smoke at the end of the particle’s life.

With PyroCluster, an unlimited number of spectacular volume effects are possible, including damping, solid rock and pyroclastic effects.

Technologies developed for PyroCluster.

PyroCluster integrates the following technologies:

  • The Volume Tracer
  • Apperceptive 3D shadow algorithms
  • gradient
  • Light Exclusion
  • (almost) all parameters can be animated

Apperceptive 3D shadow algorithms.

To be there or not to be there…

This may sound strange, but this statement really applies to PyroCluster. Apperceptive 3D shading is extremely fast. When rendering, PyroCluster uses a process that is synchronized with human perception. For example, missing elements of an image are automatically supplemented or replaced with apperceptive methods. Human perception is partly based on experience and expectation.

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The PyroCluster rendering algorithm renders the above image as a collection of hollow grey spheres. But that’s not all. Apperceptive 3D shading takes much more into account to achieve realistic effects. Unfortunately, it would go beyond the time frame if we wanted to go into detail about how this works. It should be noted that PyroCluster technology is based on the use of intelligent spheres, which we will refer to below as puffs or volumetric particles.

Excluding light.

PyroCluster is a real volume tracer that uses advanced volume calculations. Unfortunately, atmospheric effects usually take a while to render. Be careful when using multiple light sources in a PyroCluster scene. On the one hand, one or two lights are all you need to illuminate the effect. On the other hand, it is virtually impossible to illuminate an entire scene with just two lights.

So that you can choose which lights in your scene affect the PyroCluster effects, each light source in the Attribute Manager has two options on the scene page: PyroCluster Illumination and PyroCluster Shadow Casting.

These are global settings. All PyroCluster effects in a scene are affected, other objects in the scene are not affected by these settings.

How it works:

You can choose how the individual light sources affect the PyroCluster puffs.

To describe the effect of the Light Exclusion, we use a simple scene. The scene contains two light sources, both pointing to the PyroCluster effect and both casting shadows. Disabling PyroCluster illumination is useful if you are trying to control only the PyroCluster effect lighting and leave the shadows as they are. If both options are disabled, we will see the effects of other light sources.

PyroCluster is a real volume tracer that uses advanced volume calculations. Unfortunately, atmospheric effects usually take a while to render. Be careful when using multiple light sources in a PyroCluster scene. On the one hand, one or two lights are all you need to illuminate the effect. On the other hand, it is virtually impossible to illuminate an entire scene with just two lights.

So that you can choose which lights in your scene affect the PyroCluster effects, each light source in the Attribute Manager has two options on the Scenes page: PyroCluster Illumination and PyroCluster Shadow Casting.

The scene contains two light sources, both pointing to the PyroCluster effect and both casting shadows. Disabling PyroCluster illumination is useful if you are trying to control only the illumination of the PyroCluster effect and leave the shadows as they are. If both options are disabled, we will see the effects of other light sources.

These are global settings. All PyroCluster effects in a scene will be affected, while other objects will not be affected by these INDEX Shaders / Animation / Settings.

How are PyroCluster effects created?

Smoky effects require many complex fractal calculations to create the particles that make up the volume. PyroCluster uses many of these rays to create the full 3D volume effect. Since the rays travel deep into the volume of the puff, a fractal calculation is performed at each relevant point to obtain the correct volume density. This is a number-intensive calculation and you can expect it to take some time. Volumetric effects simply cannot be calculated quickly – you may already know this if you have used volumetric lights. A faster processor will always speed up PyroCluster’s rendering of effects.

However, PyroCluster is designed to be efficient and offers many powerful features to shorten render time. There are many ways to refine your scenes, one particularly useful is in the Volume Tracer settings. If you only change one World Step setting here, you can save hours or days of rendering time. Try to increase this value to realize a faster render time.

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