Hello, in this "minorial" I will try to explain how to create a good-looking spark effect in Cinema4DXL using particles and visible light sources. I decided to explain this using v5.x screenshots since many people still don't have Amber (imagine that ;-). I expect the reader to have a very basic knowledge of the program.

Preface

Before you start using the computer think, about what you are trying to achieve. This does sound somewhat redundant, I know, but the better you know what you want to do, the better you can work towards that goal. Of course, this counts for every project you do. This is even more important when using the particle system. It is easy to get lost with all those setup possibilities. You should think about how the sparks would behave in reality! Are they flying on straight paths? Do they "live" long? Do they all look the same? How fast do they move? Do they accelerate or decelerate? And so on... Make up the scene as realistic as possible in your mind. You might even want to write it down in keywords. You should believe that just about everything is possible in Cinema4DXL. You can always leave out features of your scene after you tried everything that is possible. More experienced artists will know how many particles their system can handle. But as long as you don't have that knowledge, don't worry about it. Just think of reality and go for it.

I am trying to explain how to render an anim of a saw cutting through rusty steel. Mostly you will have bright sparks flying around. Additionally, some smoke will rise from heated moisture. The final image will look something like this (move mouse over image to instant-render - click here for anim - [small] - [large]):

The more experienced artists will notice that (of course) those sparks have to lighten the local environment. This will trouble us a little later on. I will not cover how to setup the scene. I am going to focus on the particles. Then let us imagine we have the scene all ready to be "praticled", including our steel plate and the saw cutting through (download scene prior to sparks here). This is, of course, done using a Boolean animation track.